liiiilii 




I 



SPRUNG FROM THE WEST 

The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, 
The hush of spacious prairies filled his soul. 
Up from the log cabin to the capitol, 
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — 
To send the keen axe to the root of wrong, 
Clearing a free way for the feet of God. 
And ever more he burned to do his deed 
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king; 
He built the rail-piles as he built the State, 
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, 
The conscience of him testing every stroke 
To make his deed the measure of a man. 

Edwin Markham. 



Copyrighted 1921 by 
Julia Mygatt Powell 



Flashlights 

of 

Abraham Lincoln 



By 



Julia Mygatt Powell 



THE ANGELUS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
613 South Grand Avenue 
Los Angeles, California 



' '■ , .N 



E457 



OCT -3 '21 \<^ 



©r,'„A654354 



I 



Flashlights of Abraham Lincoln 

/^NE day in the year 1855, there stood at the 
^^ entrance to the Burnett House in Cincinnati, 
that old hostelry which was lately burned (1920), 
a long, lean, gaunt, sad-eyed man of about forty-five. 

His clothes w^ere ill fitting and he wore heavy 
boots. 

He was in that city as one of the counsel for the 
defendants in a case of patent infringements upon 
reaping machines. 

As this rather inelegant looking man, with all 
his native picturesqueness stood there, other counsel 
also employed in the defense came near; they looked 
the Hoosier over, passed him by without speaking, 
as unworthy of notice, and walked into the hotel. 
It would never do to have a man like that associ- 
ated with them on this important case. 

What man was this, who, unresentful of his treat- 
ment, stayed through the trial of this case, and si- 
lently watched its progress? It was said afterward 
that the judge was as much influenced by his un- 
spoken, but expressive sympathy and the play of his 
features, while he paced back and forth during the 
progress of the case, as by the argument of the 
other counsel, who ignored him. 

And who was this man ? It was the same man 
who the following year, standing on the edge of the 
platform at Bloomington, 111., held his audience 
spell-bound, as, leaning forward on his toes, hands 
on his hips, his eyes flashing, his whole face illum- 
ined with the divine fire of truth, proclaimed the 
fact that SLAVERY WAS WRONG, and to his 
audience, pressing forward, pale and breathless, to 
catch his every word, he seemed like a giant in- 



spired as he shouted, "WE WON'T GO OUT OF 
THE UNION AND YOU SHAN'T!" And 
then, as though to pour oil upon the troubled waters, 
he suggested ballots instead of bullets. 

**At that moment," said Judge Scott, one of his 
hearers, "he was the handsomest man I ever saw." 

And still five A^ars later, in 1860, when the 
committee from the great Chicago Convention, 
among whom were William M. Evarts and Carl 
Schurz, called at his unpretentious home in Spring- 
field, 111., to notify him of his nomination to the 
Presidency of the United States, they eyed their 
candidate with many misgivings — "his great height, 
his huge hands and feet, his lankness, his shoulders 
drooping as though he were irresolute. His smooth- 
shaven face seemed like bronze; cheeks sunken, 
cheek bones high, nose large, the underlip protrud- 
ing a little, eyes cast down. 

But when he lifted his head to reply, the men were 
thrilled by the change. He became erect, the eyes 
beamed with fire and intelligence. Strong, dignified, 
he seemed transformed. 

'Why, sir, they told me he was a rough diamond,' 
said one. 'Nothing could have been in better taste 
than his speech.' 

'We might have done a more daring thing, but 
we could not have done a better thing,' they said 
afterward." 



T ET us throw a flashlight backward over this 
man's pathway. 
We see him twenty-nine years before this, enter- 
ing New Salem, 111., just twenty-one, and penniless, 
begging for work, which he readily found. He had 
not even good clothes, but he had great strength and 
he w^as a good fellow. He was six feet, four inches 
tall. He could outrun any young man in the coun- 
try 'round, and lift as much as three ordinary men. 



Then his wit, his stories, his good and kindly nature, 
which had always won him friends, made friends 
at once for him now. This was in 1831. The next 
year, he was a candidate for the State Legislature. 
He was defeated, but won 227 out of 300 votes in 
his own district. In two years he was again a 
candidate, and this time, elected. 

The people looked upon him as a prodigy. Why ? 
Was it his strength, his great height, his wit, his 
stories? These all helped, but there was something 
back of all these. There was the power of CHAR- 
ACTER and of KNOWLEDGE. And whence 
came at this early age this power? During these 
twenty-one years, what had he read — what had he 
learned? 

Many a college bred man might well look with 
envy upon this ragged youth as he walked into New 
Salem to make his own way. 

The books he had conned were The Life of 
Washington, Aesop's Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, the 
lives of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Clay, the 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution 
of the United States, which he knew by heart. And 
last, but bv no means least, the Bible. 

J. G. Holland has well said, "ABRAHAM LIN- 
COLN'S POVERTY OF BOOKS WAS THE 
WEALTH OF HIS LIFE. 

The few he had, did much to perfect the teach- 
ing which his mother had begun, and to form a 
character, which for quaint simplicity, earnestness, 
truthfulness and purity has never been surpassed 
among the historic personages of the world. 

Lincoln's lack of books threw him upon his own 
resources." 

"By books may Learning sometimes befall. 
But Wisdom never by books at all." 

A testimonial to this early influence was given by 
Lincoln himself, when in a speech at Trenton, N. J., 



on his way to assume his duties as President, he 
said, "Away back in my childhood, I got hold of a 
small book called Weem's Life of Washington. I 
remember all the accounts there given of the battle- 
fields and struggles for the liberties of this country, 
and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so 
deeply as the struggle here at Trenton. The cross- 
ing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the 
great hardships endured at that time, all fixed them- 
selves in my memory more than any Revolutionary 
event. I recall thinking then, boy though I was, 
that there must have been somethiiig more than com- 
mon that these men struggled for. I am exceed- 
ingly anxious that that thing which they struggled 
for, that something even more than National inde- 
pendence, that something that held out a great 
pro?7iise to all the people of the world for all time 
to come; I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, 
the Constitution and the liberties of the people, shall 
be perpetuated in accordance with tht original idea 
for which that struggle was made/' 

npURN for a moment to this central thought, this 
principle, which is the life and strength of our 
nation. This was the great "motif" of Abraham 
Lincoln's life. It is what he lived for; worked for, 
died for. "A chain is as strong as its w^eakest link," 
and Abraham Lincoln cemented this "weakest link," 
and made a chain so strong that the "Gates of Hell 
shall not prevail against it." 

Let us review in a very simple and superficial 
way, this chain of government. 

So imbued, at the start, was each link with its 
own importance, that it took years, yes, one hun- 
dred, to strengthen the hold each link had upon the 
other, and make a strong, enduring whole. 

The year 1789, when Washington became Presi- 
dent, was the year that the terrible French Revolu- 



tion broke loose. The French thought we ought to 
help them, but the French Revolution was too awful, 
and we were too weak. We were not yet standing 
firmly on our own feet, and we were still having 
trouble with England over boundary lines and over 
our rights on the sea. There were two parties — 
those supporting the Constitution, called Federalists, 
and those opposed to it, called Anti-Federalists. 
The Federalists, under Alexander Hamilton, were 
for a strong Federal Government. The Anti-Fed- 
eralists, led by Jefferson, wanted the States to have 
the strongest power. This party w^as called at first 
Republicans, then Democrats, after the French 
Democrats and because they favored helping the 
French Revolution. Then they were known as 
Democratic Republicans. Finally, in Andrew Jack- 
son's administration, they were called Democrats, 
and the name has remained with them until now, 
although one of the questions for which they stood 
— States Rights — has been forever settled. 

But at this early time, while we had a very weak 
central government, we were having trouble with 
France as well as England. The French seized a 
thousand of our vessels. The French demanded of 
us a large sum of money. 

Then went up the rallying cry, "Millions for de- 
fence, but not one cent for tribute!" 

These troubles strengthened the Federal Gov- 
ernment. Then came the Alien and Sedition laws, 
which gave the President power to send out of the 
country any foreigner he thought dangerous to its 
welfare. This aroused the Anti-Federalists, and 
Kentucky even declared the right of any State to 
nullify or put at defiance any law which, in its 
judgment, was unconstitutional. 

Then, as ever, there was a man for the occasion. 
John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, 
exerted the greatest influence toward making the 



General Government superior to the States. Sen- 
ator Beverage truly said of him, "He found the con- 
stitution paper, and made it a power; he found it a 
skeleton and clothed it with flesh and blood." 

Shortly after this, in 1803, while Jefferson was 
President, we bought from France that great and 
at the time little known territory, called Louisiana. 
Napoleon was in dire need of money, and sold it to 
us for $15,000,000. By doing this, JefFerson, who 
believed in States Rights, was taking the greatest 
liberty with the Constitution, and went exactly 
opposite to the belief of his own party. It was 
nevertheless the greatest act of his life, and of untold 
benefit to the United States. 

Then in 1804-1806, came the Lewis and Clarke 
expeditions, exploring the country to the Pacific 
Coast. In 1807, Robert Fulton sailed his steam- 
boat up the Hudson River, and things began to move 
faster. In 1812 came the second war of Independ- 
ence. At this time, James Madison, a strong Feder- 
alist, was in the Presidential chair. 



TN the midst of these doings, in the year 1809, on 
* February 12th, in a log cabin in Kentucky, the 
hero of our sketch came into this world. It was the 
year in which Gladstone was born, and which gave 
Darwin and Tennyson to the world. 

When this second war for independence started, 
Lincoln was three years old, and when it closed he 
was six. And thus he grew 'midst these stirring 
events. 

The United States had as much reason to go to 
war with France at this time as with England, but 
we could not declare war against both. Then there 
was Canada at the north of us, and we might be 
able to lay hold of that! So it ivas war with Eng- 
land we had. 

10 



The New England Federalists were opposed to 
this war as it progressed. This party comprised the 
wealthy commercial men, and it tied up their trade. 
New England at first sent more than her quota of 
men and money, but as business distress grew and 
the management of the war was bad, their opposi- 
tion became so bitter, that they — even they — who 
stood strong for a central government — were the 
very ones to meet in private conclave, at Hartford, 
Conn., and recommend that taxes collected for the 
National Government, be reserved for their own de- 
fense. 

The cry of "Treason!" rang out from the nation, 
and the Federalist party was killed. 

This war ended the day before Christmas, 1814, 
and placed our country in a position where it com- 
manded the respect of all Europe. But it did more. 
During and after this war, manufactories sprang 
up throughout the New England and Middle States, 
thereby rendering us, to a great extent, independent 
of foreign markets. This necessitated a strong pro- 
tective tariff. 

These facts are briefly recalled to show how and 
why the Union was being gradually cemented into 
one strong governing power, and small state inter- 
ests were being merged into the greatest good for the 
greatest number. Yet the idea of States rights as 
being stronger than Federal union was by no means 
dead. 

The north was now a great manufacturing center, 
while the south exported her raw materials, and 
wished to receive in return the manufactured articles 
at lowest cost. The high tariff which was a protec- 
tion to the north, therefore, worked, as it seemed, a 
detriment to the south. Thus we see that aside from 
the slavery question, there were other interests which 
held the south to the belief in ''States Rights." The 
north reasoned that the whole country would be 

11 



benefitted by a high protective tariff. It would be 
a revenue for the government. It would benefit 
the worker by raising wages. It would give the 
producer a home market, and it w^ould make the 
country independent of foreign countries. 

Daniel Webster at this time came out strongly 
for the Federal Government, with these ringing 
words : "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one 
and Inseparable." 

Finally, when Andrew Jackson was elected 
(1829), the South Carolina people, knowing that he 
was opposed to a high protective tariff, invited him 
to a banquet, and asked him to propose his own 
toast. To their chagrin, he proposed : 

"Our Federal Union! It must be preserved!" 

He afterward reiterated this in a way to make 
South Carolina tremble, when he shouted, "Our 
Federal Union must and shall be preserved!" and 
sent General Scott to collect the tariff in South 
Carolina ports. 



"OUT before this, there had grown to be a natural 
dividing line between freedom and slavery. The 
Ohio River was that line, and running eastward it 
was called the Mason and Dixon's Line. To pass 
north of that line meant freedom to the slave, if 
he could keep from being caught. 

In 1820, Missouri, a part of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, applied for admission as a slave state. Mis- 
souri lay partly north and partly south of this divid- 
ing line. The North contended that as the Federal 
Government had owned Missouri when a territory, 
it alone had the right to say whether it should come 
in free or slave. The South argued that each state 
had the right to decide that for itself. 

Then Henry Clay, "The Great Peace-Maker," 
put through the Missouri Compromise, which ad- 

12 



mitted it as a slave state, but declared all other ter- 
ritory that remained, which was north of the south- 
ern boundary of Missouri, should forever be free. 
This the South accepted. Maine at this time was 
admitted as a free state, making twelve slave and 
twelve free states, and it was thought the slavery 
question was finally settled. 

About this time, Abraham Lincoln came into his 
majority. He was then and always, a Henrv Clay 
man. Clay was interested in the colonization of 
the free negroes and of gradual emancipation, and 
this appealed to Lincoln. He had in several trips 
to New Orleans, carrving produce and managing 
a flat-boat down the Mississippi River, from the 
time he was seventeen until he was twenty-two, seen 
the horrors of slavery, as it v^^as exhibited in the 
slave market there, and it aroused his whole soul. 
From that time, he had a sort of mystic feeling that 
he should plav some important p-^.rt in the deliver- 
ance of the slaves. 

Lincoln said his education was defective, but here 
and now he was learning the most valuable lessons 
of his life. How true it is that ''Your own will 
come to you," Was it iust a "ha-^pen so" that in 
his young boyhood the Constitution of the United 
States fell into his hands and that he learned it bv 
heart? Between his first attempt and defeat for 
the legislature, and his second attempt and success, 
he was a store-keeper and post-master. 

It was at this time that he earned the title of 
Honest Abe. Twice he walked five miles and back, 
after hours, to correct an error; once to return three 
cents, and once to m.ake good a pound of tea. 

Was it iust ''mere luck" that at this particular 
period in his life, he bought an old barrel of an 
overladen emif?rant. traveling westward, who wanted 
to lighten his load, nnd that one day, turning the 
barrel out, he found in it Blackstone's Commen- 
13 



taries? He said, "I never was so absorbed in any- 
thing in my life." 

He lay upon the counter of his store, when cus- 
tomers were far between, oblivious of the world 
about him, reading these books, while his partner, 
a man by the name of Berry, was drinking himself 
into perdition and the store into bankruptcy. 

Lincoln learned now, along with the law which 
so strongly appealed to him, and the grammar by 
which he corrected his speech, the great object les- 
son of the brutalizing power of strong drink, and 
he took his stand then, singly and alone, against the 
worse than useless, the positively harmful stuff that 
he saw dragging these early settlers into blighted 
lives. Afterward, in 1860, when the delegation 
from Chicago came to notify him of his nomination 
to the Presidency, his friends told him he should 
have some wine and treat them right. His replv 
was: "I have never had it in my house, and I shall 
not change my habit," and he returned the flasks of 
wine they sent to him. 

Lincoln, like Washington, whom he adored, never 
swerved from his purpose, once it was fixed. 

While he was still young, he always did things 
differently from other boys, and better — more thor- 
oughly — and he had a wonderful memory. His 
mother taught him and his sister all the Bible 
stories, and his ston^ telling habit dates from these 
earlv days. The people loved Lincoln always from 
the time he was a boy. In Gentrvville, from which 
plac" his father's family moved just when he was 
twenty-one. his comrades planted a cedar tree in his 
memory. This tree is still standing, as "the first 
monument to him whose monuments will never 
cease to be erected." 

Once in Gentrvville, he picked up a drunken man 
who was in danger of freezing, and carried him to 
warmth and safety. 

14 



Lincoln's ready wit always made him equal to 
any emergency. The Black Hawk war broke out 
the year he was the first time a candidate for the 
legislature. He enlisted and was elected captain of 
a company of volunteers. He was marching across 
a field with a front of over twenty men, when he 
had to pass through a gateway to the next enclo- 
sure. He said, "I could not, for the life of me, think 
of the proper word to get my company endwise, so 
I shouted, 'This company is dismissed for two min- 
utes, and it will fall in again on the other side of 
the gate.' " 

He made a great many speeches at this time, and 
his knowledge of affairs, his logic, his interest, was 
true and straight. 

On one occasion a fight started between some 
opposing parties and some of his friends. He saw 
that his friends were being worsted, and he jumped 
down from the platform, promptly whipped the 
other men, then came back and finished his speech. 

He learned surveying at this time, and was so 
correct in his surveys that he"was in constant demand 
at three dollars per day, and became, like Wash- 
ington, the authorized (deputy) county surveyor. In 
his journeyings as surveyor, there was not a home 
where he was not more than welcome. His honest, 
kindly, helpful nature and his ready wit and stories 
appealed to all. 



LIFE was before him. His mind was well trained 
— trained by himself and necessity, and assimi- 
lated knowledge easily. 

He was ambitious, and — in love. Engaged to 

Ann Rutledge, a beautiful girl. Her sad death in 

August, 1835, threw Lincoln into the deepest gloom. 

She had malarial fever, which developed into hasty 

consumption, Lincoln also at this time, and for 

15 



months, was affected with the same fever. It was 
quite prevalent, and many people died from it. This 
condition of his own health, no doubt, gave an 
added gloom to his sorrow over the death of his 
sweetheart, so that his friends feared his reason 
would forsake him. 

A friend, Bowling Green, by name, took him into 
his home and there he was nursed back to health. 
But to the grave of Ann Rutledge he often went, 
and said that his heart was buried there. With his 
iron grip, however, he outwardly mastered himself. 

This new sorrow brought in the end that poise 
and power, which only deep grief can bring. Lin- 
coln's life had been full of sadness, for his affections 
were deep. The loss of his mother he felt very 
keenly, and then his sister a few years later was 
taken. 

He seems to have been fond of his step-mother, 
Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln. She was sensible, 
kind and much interested in her step-son. tho she 
brought three children of her own into the Lincoln 
household. 

But Lincoln, while he was a part of, was always 
apart from other people. He felt more keenly. He 
was deeper, bigger, broader, more in touch with the 
unseen, more alive and in sympathy with unseen 
influences. He could not explain this. He could 
not say "I am different," but he felt it. 

"We are mortals clad in veils 
Man by man was never seen 
All our deep communings fail 
To remove the shadowy screen." 



GREATNESS does not come by chance — there's 
a reason. There is a mental and spiritual law 
as well as a physical. We do not understand it, but 
it exists just the same. 

16 



Lincoln never knew exactly who he was, and he 
had various surmises, which are supposed to have 
tinged his life with a melancholy strain. 

But it has been ascertained definitely that he 
came of honorable lineage, on both sides of his 
parentage. There is not time in this short sketch 
to go into it, but William E. Barton, after great 
painstaking research, has written a 400-page volume 
upon the subject, and contemporary writers have 
also traced his ancestry straight and legitimately 
back to the early days of 1635 and back of that to 
England, so that were Lincoln living today he 
might be a Son of the Revolution and his sister a 
Colonial Dame. But of ivhat use are any of these 
societies, if not to work and fight for the great 
principles which glorify and uplift the honor, integ- 
rity, dignity and pozver of the nation — just as Lin- 
coln did'' 

Lincoln was big, broad, bountiful in his mind. 
It was never of himself that he thought. Small 
politics never interested him, but when a great prin- 
ciple was at stake, when a great wrong was, or about 
to be, perpetrated upon his fellow beings, then it 
was that his titanic powers were roused, and the 
force of his eloquence was supreme. 

Lincoln always acknowledged his lack of classical 
training. His studies in the school room were less 
than a year. Once when a party of distinguished 
ministers visited him in Washington, one turned to 
the other and repeated something in Latin. Lincoln 
leaned forward in his chair and said, "All of which, 
I presume you know, I do not understand." 

A few days after this, however, in riding out to 
his summer home, on the outskirts of the city, he 
described and discoursed upon all the varied trees 
by the way, showing, as he said, the knowledge he 
had gained as a frontiersman. 

17 



And now in 1836 he is admitted to the practice 
of law. While in the Illinois legislature for four 
j^ears, he was largely instrumental in having the 
capitol of the state removed to Springfield, and in 
Springfield he now opens his law office. Stephen A. 
Douglas, whom Lincoln met in the legislature, and 
had met before that in New Salem, is also a resi- 
dent of Springfield. 

It is in this city that he is to live for the next 
twenty-five years, here he is to show his power of 
logic and reason, his knowledge of men and affairs. 
Mr. Herndon, who was his junior partner, says of 
him: 

"The truth about the whole matter is that Lin- 
coln read less and thought more than any man in 
his sphere in America. When young he read the 
Bible, and when of age, he read Shakespeare. The 
latter book was scarcely ever out of his mind. He 
possessed originality and power of thought in an 
eminent degree. He was cautious, cool, patient and 
enduring. He must know his subject inside and out- 
side, upside and downside. 

He was a merciless analyzer of facts, things and 
principles. All opponents dreaded him, and woe be 
to the man who hugged to himself a secret error if 
Mr. Lincoln got on the chase of it. 

His pursuit of truth was indefatigable, terrible. 
It seemed at times that Mr. Lincoln was fresh from 
the hand of the Creator. He was an odd and orig- 
inal man. He lived by himself and out of himself. 
He was a very sensitive man, unobstrusive and 
gentlemanly. He had no avarice in his nature, nor 
any other vice. It puzzled him at Washington to 
know and to get at the root of this dread desire, 
this contagious disease of national robbery in the 
Nation's death struggle. 

18 / 



This man, this long, bony, wiry, sad-eyed man, 
floated into our country in 1831, in a frail canoe, 
down the north fork of the Sangamon River, friend- 
less, penniless, powerless and alone — begging tor 
work. Ragged, struggling for the common necessi- 
ties of life. 

This man J, this peculiar man, left us in 1861 , as 
President of the United States, backed by friends, 
power, fame and all human force." 



T N 1837, the year after Lincoln moved himself 

and his small belongings to Springfield, and had 
begun the practice of law in that city, he went one 
day with some lawyers and doctors to a camp meet- 
ing at Salem, his old "camping-ground." 

He cracked jokes and was the life of the crowd. 
When they reached the camp meeting, Peter Akers, 
a famous preacher, was holding forth. His sermon 
was three hours long, and he said a great war would 
put an end to slavery in the sixties. The crowd 
surged around the preacher, and he cried out, ''Who 
can tell but that the man who shall lead us thru 
this strife may be standing here?" A solemn still- 
ness fell over the assembly. 

As they were returning to Springfield, Lincoln 
remained silent a long time. At last, one asked him 
what he thought of the sermon. His answer was: 

"Peter Akers has convinced me that American 
slavery will go down in the crash of civil war; and, 
gentlemen, you may be surprised, but when the 
preacher was describing the civil war, I distinctly 
saw myself, as in second sight, bearing an important 
part in that strife." 

The next day, Mr. Lincoln came very late to 
the office, looking pale and haggard. Mr. Herndon 
exclaimed, "Why, Lincoln, what's the matter?" 

19 



Lincoln replied, "I am utterly unable to shake 
myself free from the conviction that I shall be in- 
volved in that war." 



T INCOLN'S life was undoubtedly inspired from 
early childhood, and was a life of growth from 
inspiration to inspiration. 

WE have seen how the death of Ann Rutledgc 
affected him, but life with her was not to be. 
It had exerted its influence; it helped to give him 
strength and power, but he was now to come into 
the aura of one who had faith in him, had ambition 
for him, who saw his greatness, and who alwavs 
helped and urged him toward the goal which she 
clearly saw was his. 

I say this, because in my opinion (after careful 
investigation) Mary Todd, the wife of Abraham 
Lincoln, has been much maligned. 

She Vv^as high-strung, temperamental, of good 
family, a brilliant conversationalist, well educated 
and a fine French scholar. Her relatives did not 
favor her marriage with Lincoln, who tho brilliant, 
was thought to be of too obscure and ordinary pedi- 
gree for their fastidious tastes. Mary Todd, how- 
ever, preferred Lincoln to any of her suitors, and 
she had many. They became engaged, but Lincoln 
tho polite and gentlemanly was lacking in the nice 
little attentions which women like, and was often 
delinquent in these respects. The engagement was 
finally broken and so remained for nearly a year. 

He had said not long before this that his **heart 
was in the grave with Ann Rutledge," but the old 
adage is pretty true that, 

"Men have died and worms have eaten them; but 
not for lovey 

20 



Tho Lincoln was deeply in love with this beauti- 
ful girl, he never would have become the man he 
did, had he married her. 

Mary Todd was in love with Lincoln. She dis- 
cerned through the unprepossessing setting, the fire 
of the great soul within. An old lady in Spring- 
field said: 

"We girls all liked Lincoln, tho he was not a 
ladies' man. The only thing we had against him 
was that he attracted all the men away by them- 
selves at our parties." 

The engagement with Miss Todd was renewed in 
about a year, and on November 4th, 1842, they were 
very quietly married. In tw^o years after this he 
purchased a very unpretentious home, in which he 
lived until he left it for the White House in 1861. 

His four boys were born here, and here they lived 
among their friends and the gossips for seventeen 
years. Mrs. Lincoln undoubtedly had some temper, 
but she was kind and always interested in her hus- 
band's welfare. She was quick to see what was for 
his advantage and to throw her influence that way. 
He did some things which shocked her sense of con- 
ventionality and roused her ire. 

One day the door bell rang, and Mr. Lincoln 
in his friendly homespun way (it is said, in his 
shirt-sleeves) opened the door and ushered in two 
stylish Springfield dames. 

"Come right in," he said, "and I'll go and run 
the women-folks in." 

Mr. Lincoln himself "ran out" very shortly after 
this, and was not seen around the premises again 
for several hours. 

Mrs. Lincoln employed at this time a very ca- 
pable Swedish maid, a part of whose duties it was 
to wait upon the door. 

21 



Many American dames who never even thought 
of aspiring to be "First Lady of the Land," would 
not have been meek under such provocation. 

A lady said to Mrs. Lincoln one day, "If I had 
a husband with the brains yours has, I wouldn't 
mind if he smashed every conventionality." 

"I suppose I am foolish," replied Mrs. Lincoln, 
well pleased with the compliment. 

Stephen Fiske in "When Lincoln was First In- 
augurated," says: 

"When they were on their way to Washington in 
1861, upon reaching New York City, as the train 
was stopping they saw the immense crowds that had 
gathered. Then Mrs. Lincoln opened her handbag 
and said "Abraham, I must fix you up a little for 
these city folks." Mr. Lincoln lifted her gently to 
the seat in front of him. She parted and brushed 
his hair and arranged his black necktie. "Do I look 
nice now. Mother?" he affectionately asked. 

"Well, you'll do, Abraham," she replied. So he 
kissed her and lifted her down from the seat. 

And it was this motherly care that Mrs. Lin- 
coln always had over him. They were a happy 
family, on the whole, possibly with an occasional 
break, living in their quiet home in Springfield, and 
Mr. Lincoln was devoted to his boys, who were full 
of their pranks. They never annoyed him, but 
seemed to afford him endless amusement. 



TV/fR. RANKIN in his Personal Recollections of 
Abraham Lincoln, says: 
"Mr. Lincoln was ten years her senior. He had 
passed the 'susceptible age' when marriages are con- 
tracted on impulse. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln in 
many situations — at their home, leaving home, sepa- 
rating for absence on business or pleasure, when call- 

22 



ing at the law office during busy hours, driving out 
together, at parties, attending church, in both pleas- 
ant and trying situations with their children, with 
their friends, their political foes, and later with 
huzzahing crowds, and in none of these situations 
did I ever detect in Mrs. Lincoln aught but the most 
wifely and matronly propriety and respect toward 
her husband, her family and her friends." 

There were moods of inner solitude into which 
Lincoln sometimes lapsed. They were characteristic 
of him long before she met him. Her sprightly spirit 
and keen wit lit up this gloom. She, of all who were 
near him, was the only one who had the skill and 
tact to shorten their duration. 

He was careless and indifferent about his eating, 
and she in her anxiety for his health was insistent 
that he should eat regularly well prepared food. 
Once in the White House he was in consultation 
over an important matter when the butler announced 
dinner. He paid no attention. Then little "Tad" 
came and begged and pulled his father to ''come to 
dinner." He dismissed the little fellow, saying, 
"Yes, yes, directly." But in a few minutes Mrs. 
Lincoln appeared and emphatically informed him of 
the repeated calls to dinner, and that they were wait- 
ing for him. 

At this Mr. Lincoln laid aside the documents, 
and without the least displeasure, crossed the room, 
took Mrs. Lincoln by both arms, and slowly and 
gently moved toward the doorway, until she was 
through it, then closing the door and locking it, he 
quietly, without a word, went on with the business. 
Thus he showed that when more important things 
than himself were at stake he was master. 

Mrs. Lincoln's motive behind all this was right. 
She was solicitous for her husband's welfare, and it 
was this care of hers that, no doubt, helped greatly 



23 



to keep him in strength and health during his most 
strenuous years, for he was always very indifferent 
to the importance of regular food, as well as regular 
hours of rest. 



lyi R. ALCOTT, of Elgin, Illinois, tells of seeing 
Mr. Lincoln coming home from church un- 
usually early one Sunday. *'Tad" was slung across 
his arm like a pair of saddle bags, and Mr. Lincoln 
was striding with long, deliberate steps toward his 
home. 

On a corner he met a group of friends. "Gentle- 
men," he said, "I entered this colt, but he kicked so, 
I had to withdraw him." 

Mr. Lincoln's kindness was proverbial in Spring- 
field. One day he saw a little girl standing by her 
gate and crying. He stopped and asked her what 
the matter was. "Oh. Mr. Lincoln," she said, "I 
was going to take the train for a visit, but the man 
doesn't come for my trunk, and I shall miss it." 

"Is that all?" said Mr. Lincoln. "Well, dry your 
eyes and let me look at the trunk." He followed 
the little girl upstairs, shouldered the not overlarge 
trunk, carried it to the depot, and saw the happy 
little girl and her trunk safely on their journey. 

Such homely, every-day acts of kindness endeared 
Mr. Lincoln to Springfield people, and no one could 
be more beloved than he by his fellow townsfolk. 

He was a gentleman at heart. A gentleman born, 
and he would fain have forgotten the rough, hard, 
rail splitting, ragged, bare-foot, uncouth days of his 
childhood, but, if he individually could have for- 
gotten them, his relatives and "friends" took care 
that he should not. 

And thus passed the seventeen following years at 
Springfield. He was saddled with a $1200 debt, 

24 



which his drunken partner in Salem had left for him 
to carry, and he had his father's indigent family to 
aid — these matters, combined with the fact that Mr. 
Lincoln's acquisitiveness amounted to making an 
honest living, and that a frugal one, with always a 
fear of overcharging his clients, brought him at the 
end of these seventeen years to where he owned just 
the house he lived in. 

He never drank liquor, nor used tobacco. In this 
way he put the laugh over on Stephen A. Douglas 
once in their debates. 

At one of their meetings, Douglas told the crowd 
that when he first knew Lincoln he was a "grocery- 
keeper, and sold whiskey, cigars, etc." 

"Mr. Lincoln," he said, "was a very good bar- 
tender." This put the laugh on Lincoln. But Mr. 
Lincoln's reply came soon. 

"What Mr. Douglas has said, gentlemen, is true 
enough. I did keep a grocery, and I did sell cotton, 
candles, cigars and sometimes whiskey, but I remem- 
ber in those days Mr. Douglas was one of my best 
customers. I can also say this : that I have since left 
my side of the counter, while Mr. Douglas sticks 
to his!" 

This brought such a storm of cheers and laughter 
that Douglas was silenced. 

Lincoln went on living, cracking his jokes, telling 
his stories, winning his cases, making friends and ex- 
tending his reputation throughout Illinois. 



A LAWYER one day said to one of the judges 
that he thought Lincoln's stories were a waste 
of time. 

"Lay not that flattering unction to your soul," 
replied the judge. "Lincoln is like Tansey's horse, 
he breaks to win." 

25 



And win he did. In 1846 he was elected to 
Congress. 

During this time Judge Hammond and Thomas 
H. Nelson, (the latter appointed by Lincoln, when 
President, minister to Chili) were going from Terre 
Haute to Indianapolis by stage coach. 

"As we stepped in," said Nelson later, "we saw 
that the entire back seat was occupied by a long, lank 
individual whose head seemed to protrude from one 
side of the coach and his feet from the other. Ham- 
mond slapped him familiarly on the shoulder and 
asked him if he had chartered the whole coach that 
day." 

" 'Certainly not,' and he at once took the front 
seat, giving us the place of honor and comfort. An 
odd looking fellow he was, without vest or cravat. 
Regarding him as a subject for merriment, we per- 
petrated several jokes. He took them with the ut- 
most good nature and joined in the laugh, though 
at his own expense. 

"After an astounding display of wordy pyro- 
technics, the stranger asked, 'What will became of 
this Comet business?' 

"Reaching Indianapolis, we went to our hotel, 
losing sight of the stranger. After washing up, I 
descended to the portico, and there descried our long, 
gloomy fellow-traveler in the center of an admiring 
group of lawyers, among whom were Judges Mc- 
Lean and Huntington, Albert S. White and Richard 
W. Thompson, who seemed amused at the story he 
was telling. I enquired of the landlord who he was. 

" 'Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, a member of 
Congress,' was the reply. I was thunderstruck and 
hurried upstairs to tell Hammond. Together we 
emerged from the hotel by a back door and down 
an alley to another house, thus avoiding further con- 
tact with our fellow-traveler. 

26 



"Years after, when the President-elect was on his 
way to Washington, I was in the same hotel looking 
the distinguished party over, when a long arm 
reached to my shoulder and a shrill voice exclaimed, 
'Hello, Nelson! Do you think the whole world is 
going to follow the darned thing ofiV These were 
my own words in answer to his question regarding 
the Comet in the stage coach. The speaker w^as 
Abraham Lincoln." 

Yes, Lincoln would tell his stories, be chatty, 
cheerful and laugh, and yet, as Herndon says, "You 
could see, if you had any perception, that Lincoln's 
soul was not present ; it was in another sphere. He 
was with you, yet not with you ; familiar with you, 
yet kept you at a distance. Lincoln was a reticent, 
secretive, uncommunicable man. He lived a pure 
and lofty life. This I know, and in his practical 
life he was spiritual. Lincoln's conscience was his 
Court of Courts, from which there was no appeal." 



T)UT now he is in Congress. Let us see what 
he is doing there. 

The Mexican war is on. The Whigs detested 
this war, but all the slave owners were pushing it 
along. Southern people had migrated to Texas 
because they could hold slaves there, and in 1835 
Texas revolted against Mexico, and declared its 
independence, defeated the Mexicans and asked ad- 
mission to the United States. The North objected, 
but the South voted it in, in 1845. 

Texas was fifty times as large as Connecticut, and 
would make several Southern states. The objection 
the North had to annexation was that it w^ould make 
trouble with Mexico, which it did. But this was an 
argument in its favor with the South. A war with 
Mexico might bring them still more slave states. 



There arose at once a dispute over the boundary 
line. The American troops invaded what the Mexi- 
cans called their territory, and the Mexicans came 
over and killed some Americans. Then President 
Polk declared: 

"War exists, notwithstanding all my efforts to 
avoid it." 

Lincoln was greatly disappointed when, two years 
before, Henry Clay was defeated and James K. Polk 
was elected President. 

Slavery was now the great political question, and 
Lincoln, who was so perfectly acquainted with pub- 
lic documents, and awake to the principle that no 
liberties must be taken with the Constitution, was 
watching events with the eye of a jealous God. 

He made a speech arraigning the President for not 
acting in good faith, and intimated that Polk was 
deeply conscious of being in the wrong — "that he 
feels this war crying to Heaven against him, and 
trusting to evade scrutiny by fixing the public gaze 
upon the exceeding brightness of Military Glory, 
that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of 
blood, that serpent's eye, that charms but to destroy/' 

He also introduced a bill, as Clay had done before 
him, to purchase and free all slaves in the District 
of Columbia, but it did not pass. 

When Taylor was elected in 1848, Lincoln's 
term as Congressman expired, and he refused re- 
nomination, saying, "Turn about is fair play." But 
his good work while in Congress brought him many 
invitations to speak throughout the East. The Balti- 
more press styled him a "very keen, original fellow, 
and a tremendous wag withal." 

On this Eastern trip he saw how impossible it 
would be to ever hope to reconcile Northern Abo- 
litionists with Southern slavery. 

28 



Lincoln held to theMdea that the Constitution of 
the United States was sacred, and as long as it per- 
mitted slavery, slavery must be endured, and he 
realized that the reason slavery w^as considered right 
in the South and wrong in the North was because it 
paid in the South and did not pay in the North. 

He was too clear visioned not to see through all 
the righteous sentiment against slavery the political 
schemes which lay beneath. 

Both Washington and Lincoln were guided by 
their hearts, and not alone by their heads. 

"Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your 
heart what it doth know," said the Bard of Avon. 
And in his heart Lincoln knew that had William 
Lloyd Garrison lived in the South, under the direct 
influence of slavery, breathing the same air with the 
owners of slaves, depending upon slave labor for 
his prosperity, he would not have been so pro- 
noimced about Abolition. 

And Lincoln knew that the North was iust as 
much to blame as the South for the introduction 
of this same slavery into the Union, and that because 
it didn't pay was the only reason the North gave 
it up. 

"Vice is a monster of such hideous mein 
That to be hated, needs but to be seen ; 
But seen too oft — familiar to the face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

The North was removed from this evil and the 
distance made it look hideous. I/incoln knew this, 
and brought it out clearlv in his Second Inaugural. 

But in the meantime, after his trip East, he settles 
himself down to business at the old stand, and 
quietly practices law. He knew what was coming, 
but he bided his time. 

29 



TV/fR. SPEED says: "After his first years as a 
lawyer, he was acknowledged to be among the 
best in the state. His analytical powers were mar- 
velous. He always resolved every question into its 
primary elements, and gave rp every point on his 
own side that did not seem to be invulnerable. One 
would think he was giving his case away. But he 
always reserved a point upon which he claimed a 
decision in his favor, and his concessions magnified 
the strength of his claim. He rarely failed in gain- 
ing his cases in court." 

Honorable David Davis said: '*He hated wrong 
and oppression evervwhere, p.nd many a man whose 
fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a 
court of justice, has withered under his terrific indig- 
nation and rebuke." 

Mr. Lincoln was once associated with Mr. 
Leonard Swett in defending a man accused of mur- 
der. He listened to the testimony which witness 
after v/itness gave against his client, till his honest 
heart could stand it no longer, then turning to his 
associate, he said, ''Swett, the man is guilty. You 
defend him. I can't." 

Swett did defend him, and the man was acquitted. 
Lincoln declined his share of the fee, saying Swett 
had by his eloquence saved a guilty man from jus- 
tice, and it all belonged to him. 

At another time, he left the court and the bailifif 
found him in the office of a nearby hotel, his feet on 
the stove, in a brown study. 

"Mr. Lincoln, the judge wants vou," said the 
bailiff. 

"Oh, does he? Well, you go back and tell the 
judge I have to vjash my hands/' He would not go 
back to the case. 

Lincoln was indifferent about his dress, and care- 
less to a fault about his personal appearance. How- 

30 



ever, on one occasion, at least, he is described as hav- 
ing on a well fitting broadcloth suit, black silk 
cravat, tied well up around the neck, a pair of highly 
polished boots, and carrying a silk hat. 

This was in the trial of a case in Danville, Illinois, 
and it is presumable that he wore the same suit upon 
other occasions. 

On these court circuit trips from town to town, 
there was always a brilliant bunch of lawyers and 
judges, and they would sit up late and crack their 
jokes. On one of these trips. Judge Linder's daugh- 
ter, with a young lady friend, accompanied him. 

In the morning, Mr. Lincoln said to one of them, 
''Did we disturb your sleep last night?" 

"No, I had no sleep," was the reply, which seemed 
to amuse him. But the ladies demurred that the 
gentlemen had the most fun after the ladies had 
retired. 

"But, Madame," said Lincoln, "you would not 
have enjoyed the things we laugh at." 

Then he deplored the fact that men seemed to 
enjoy and remember his "broad" stories better than 
any others. 

Judge Linder replied that he did not remember 
the "broad" part so much as the moral that was in 
them, and to this they all agreed. 

HTHE "poor whites" of Kentucky spoke, in Lin- 
coin's time, and afterward, the old Shakespearean 
English, and, uncultured as they were in up-to-date 
standards, yet the writings of Swift, Smollett, John- 
son, Decameron, etc., had sifted through and tinged 
their thoughts and speech. 

Abraham Lincoln had, no doubt, received an early 
bias by this influence, and besides this, anyone who 
reads a straight, unexpurgated edition of the Bible 
and Shakespeare continually, must, if naturally 

31 



spiritually minded, as Lincoln was, unconsciously 
form the habit of drawing practical moral and 
spiritual lessons from what seems to many people 
with less penetration and more material minds, as, 
at least, bordering upon the obscene. (This is put- 
ting it mildly.) 

Lincoln never told a story without a purpose, and 
that purpose a moral and uplifting one. 

Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist, who, while paint- 
ing the portraits of Lincoln and his cabinet, lived for 
six months at the White House, speaking of the re- 
ports that Lincoln habitually indulged in objection- 
able stories, says: 

"Mr. Lincoln, I am convinced, has been greatly 
wronged in this respect. Every foul-mouthed man 
in the country gave currency to the slime and filth 
of his own imagination by attributing it to the 
President. 

"It is but simple justice to his memory that I 
should state that during the entire period of my 
stay in Washington, after witnessing his intercourse 
with nearly all classes of men, embracing Governors, 
Senators, men of Congress, officers of the Navy, and 
intimate friends, I cannot recollect to have heard 
him relate a circumstance to anv one of them which 
would have been out of place for a ladies' drawing 
room. And this testimony is not unsupported by 
others, well entitled to consideration. 

Dr. Stone, his familv physician, came in one day 
to see my studies. Sitting in front of the President, 
with whom he did not sympathize politically, he 
remarked, with much feeling, 'It is the province of 
the physician to probe deeplv into the interior lives 
of men, and I affirm that Mr. Lincoln is the purest 
hearted man with whom I have ever come in con- 
tact.' " 

32 



Secretary Seward said, "Mr. Lincoln is the best 
man I ever knew.* " 

Henry B. Rankin, in his "Recollections of Abra- 
ham Lincoln," says: 

"There is certainly a great reward awaiting the 
artist who can so study Lincoln as to reproduce, and 
permanently preserve for all future time, his com- 
manding presence in the dignity and composure 
manifested by him on public occasions. 

"Every part of Lincoln's body betokened readi- 
ness. A man of action — an alert, living, watchful, 
sensitive, seeing personality, ready for service. In 
speaking, his shoulders were thrown slightly back- 
ward, and those far-visioned eyes lit up with an ani- 
mation that freed his countenance from any severity 
of outline." 



A ND it was this man, this man who in his severest 
trials, gave utterance, both in words and life, 
to the most sublime truths of faith and trust, who 
has been called an infidel ! 

Mr. Lincoln was a Christian mystic. Francis 
Grierson, in his little book called "The Practical 
Mystic," approaches the truth most nearly. 

Mr. Lincoln said himself to Mrs. Rankin : 

"I cannot, without mental reservations, assent to 
long and complicated creeds and catechisms. If the 
church would ask simply for the Saviour's statement 
of the Substance of the Law: 'Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as 
thyself,' that church I would gladly unite with." 

The Rev. J. F. Jacquess was with him when he 
said this. He, Jacquess, was afterward Colonel of 
the 73rd regiment of Illinois Volunteers, in the Civil 
War, and did Lincoln an inestimable service in go- 
ing on a secret mission to Jefferson Davis. This 
33 



visit to the Confederacy, in time of the darkest days 
of the Rebellion, was mystical, and if Lincoln had 
not believed in the guidance of the Invisible Spirit 
of Truth, he never would have yielded to Mr. 
Jacquess' plea to be sent as a messenger of the 
Almighty. 

Lincoln believed himself to be in the hands of an 
invisible, irresistible, inevitable power. He believed 
in law — eternal, universal law. 

He never believed that the value of a God de- 
pended upon his ignoring great cosmic laws, on a 
moment's notice and attending to the individual, but 
he believed that every individual was a part of the 
great cosmic whole, and came under the same mate- 
rial and spiritual law. This he brought out clearly 
in his second inaugural address. 

Lincoln, in his religious belief, in his grand 
nobility of character and of purpose, in his Christ- 
like forgiveness, and meek, submissive, yet ever pur- 
poseful spirit ; always sinking himself in the great 
object before him ; and in his closeness to the Great 
Invisible, was so much above and beyond his "ortho- 
dox" critics that it is a wonder they do not hear the 
voice from Heaven saying, "The place whereon 
thou standest is Holy Ground." 

Lincoln could never have anything, religious or 
other\\'ise, "crammed down his throat." He had to 
think things out his own way, and with his own 
light. And that light at times shone very clearly. 
He thought as he was led to think by the light of 
experience, affliction and reflection ; and this reflec- 
tion was often the reflex of his inner consciousness, 
for he had a soul that had traveled far on its journey 
toward God. (Good.) 

His opinions, his decisions, his dreams were often 
prophetic. They were like the Voice of Truth lead- 

34 



ing him, and often allowing him to catch a glimpse 
beyond the Veil. 

After he was elected to the Presidency, he tells of 
lying down in Mrs. Lincoln's sitting room one day, 
and seeing a double reflection of himself in the 
mirror — one face more indistinct than the other and 
a little beyond it. He could not account for this 
and thought it might be some refraction of the light. 
The next day, he arranged himself in the same posi- 
tion and the same phenomena was repeated. Mrs. 
Lincoln told him she thought it meant a renomina- 
tion for the second term, but that he would not live 
through it. 

Then, the night before his assassination, he 
dreamed that he was sailing in a mysterious vessel 
with the swiftness of the wind toward a dark and 
vanishing shore. He had dreamed this same dream 
many times before, usually before some great battle. 

He repeated this dream to Secretary Stanton, and 
it is said that Stanton urged him not to go to the 
theatre that night. 

But dreams, if they are anything, are visions, not 
warnings. They foretell things that are to be, not 
things that can be avoided. 

Lincoln said that he was in the hands of an Over- 
Ruling Providence, whose ways were inscrutable. 
That conditions and events controlled men. And 
yet Lincoln believed that man was accountable for 
his acts, and for the thought behind the act. 



J^ERNDON said: 

"Lincoln is a man of heart, aye, gentle as a 
woman's and as tender, but he has a will strong as 
iron. If any question comes up which is doubtful, 
questionable, and which no man can demonstrate, 
his friends can rule him. But when on Right, 

35 



Liberty, Justice, the Constitution and the Union, 
then all stand aside! No man, no set of men, can 
move him. There is no failure here. You and I 
must keep the people right. God will keep Lincoln 
right f' 

After his return from Congress, Lincoln devoted 
much more time to study than before. His desire 
was to bring himself up to the culture of the East. 
He became the leading lawyer of Illinois. 

The years passed on between 1849 and 1854. The 
railroads had brought eastern people v/est to the 
?reat prairie lands and to the mining camps. About 
3.000.000 immip-rants from Europe had settled 
throughout the West. The North and West was a 
great hive of industry. Everybodv worked. All 
labor was honorable, while in the South there were 
the three classes — the slave owners who did no work, 
the slaves who did all the work (three slaves would 
do as much as one good northern white man), and 
the DOor whites, who did ju<?t as little work as 
possible. 

The comparison, therefore, of thrift and enter- 
prise was decidedly in favor of the North. No 
immigrants would go South for obvious reasons. 

In 1854. the territories of Kan'^ns and Nebraska 
had become populous enough to be admitted into 
the Union as states, and now occurred something 
which aroused Lincoln to the depths of his soul and 
brought him firmly to his feet. It was the Repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise. This meant the exten- 
sion of slavery. 

Stenhen A. Douelas, then a member of the United 
States Senate, introduced a bill to carrv it into Kan- 
sas and Nebraska. The South carried the measure 
and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitu- 
tional. The North was incensed. Douglas went 



to Chicago to pacify the people, but was hooted 
from the platform. 

He had, however, great charm and power, and a 
little later spoke at the State Fair in Springfield to 
a great crowd. 

It was announced that Lincoln would reply to 
him the next day. His friends expected him to do 
well, but he far surpassed their fondest hopes. 
"When had he mastered the history of the slavery 
question so well!" 

''Disavowing all prejudice against the Southern 
people," he declared, ''They are just what we would 
be in their situation.'' 

"It all depends upon whether a negro is a man or 
not. If he is not a man, then he who is a man may 
do just what he pleases with him. 

But if he is a man, then is it not a total destruc- 
tion of self-government to say that he, too, shall not 
rule himself? 

When the white man governs himself, that is self- 
government, but when he governs himself and also 
governs another man, that is despotism. 

What I do say, is that no man is good enough to 
govern another man without that other man's con- 
sent. 

I say this is the leading principle, the sheet anchor 
of American Republicanism." 

It was about this time that the old Whig party 
was merged into the Republican party. 

The excitement over Kansas was intense. The 
new state was in the hands of a pro-slavery mob. 
We must understand that the slave trade, the buy- 
ing and selling, as well as the overseeing of the 
slaves, was in the hands of very common, brutal 
people. The owners were usually kind-hearted 
gentlemen, who never soiled their hands with this 
kind of business, and the mob that now controlled 

37 



Kansas was of this low class, the traders, not the 
owners. The capitol of Kansas was laid in ruins, 
and its governor taken prisoner. 

A MEETING was called at Bloomington, Illi- 
nois, to form a new party. Hitherto there were 
Whig Abolitionists and Democrat Abolitionists. 
Now there must be a merging of all anti-slavery 
men into one party, and here at Bloomington it was 
formed. Speaker after speaker was called to the 
platform, without producing any effect. Finally 
there was a call for "Lincoln! Give us Lincoln!" 

A tall figure arose, and walked to the platform. 
It was the crisis of his life and he realized it. *'He 
had been fighting slavery for years under the name 
of Whig, now he saw its futility." 

Very slowly he began his speech, but as he grew 
in intensity, he seemed like a giant inspired. It was 
at this meeting as noticed at the beginning of this 
"flashlight" that Lincoln shouted, "We won't go 
out of the Union, and you shan't!" 

The effect was such that reporters forgot to take 
notes, and it was called Lincoln's lost speech, though 
parts of it were remembered and preserved. Thus 
was born the Republican party! 

This was in May, 1856. In the autumn of that 
year Buchanan was elected President. Shortly after 
this "The Dred Scott Case" intensified the feeling 
of the North. The annulment of the Missouri 
Compromise — or the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, as it was 
called — deprived Congress of any right to regulate 
slavery in the territories, but Kansas and Nebraska 
being filled with enterprising Northern men and 
foreigners who saw no chance for a white man in a 
slave-holding state, had voted themselves into the 
Union as Free States. But now the Dred Scott 
decision by Judge Taney again set the North on fire. 



Dred Scott was a slave belonging to an army 
surgeon. This surgeon went from Missouri in 1834 
and took his slave with him to Illinois, and some 
years afterward to the territory of Minnesota. 
When they returned to Missouri, the slave claimed 
that, as he had been in a free country, he was a free 
man. The case was finally tried in the United 
States Supreme Court. 

The decision was: 

"I. That a slave, according to the Constitution, 
was not a person, but a chattel or mere piece of prop- 
erty. 

"II. That the Missouri Compromise, forbid- 
ding slavery in a part of the Louisiana Purchase — 
was not constitutional, since Congress had no right 
to interfere with slavery in the territories. 

"III. That a master had as much right to take 
his slave into a free state as he had to take his horse 
or cow or any personal property." 

T^HIS meant clearly that slavery could be carried 
into any state. The North was aflame! 

"What!" cried Douglas, "Oppose the decision of 
the Supreme Court of the United States! It is 
anarchy!" 

Lincoln met him squarely on this issue. Douglas 
readily acquiesced to Lincoln's proposal that they 
should hold seven debates, in different cities of the 
state. The whole country watched these debates, 
and they were fully reported in every leading news- 
paper. 

Douglas went in great state and pomp — a special 
train and band playing. 

Lincoln traveled with great simplicity, though 
the people made many demonstrations. 

In the Lincoln processions were what Lincoln 
called a "basket of flowers." Thirty-two young girls 



In a resplendent car, bearing banners. At Charles- 
town was a thirty-third, with a banner inscribed, 
"Kansas. I will be free." 

And mottoes like this: 
"Westward the Star of Empire takes it way. 
The girls link on to Lincoln, their mothers were 
for Clay." 

"Abe, the Giant Killer," etc. (Douglas was 
called "The little Giant.") 

Lincoln soon discoveed that Douglas was not al- 
ways truthful; and Lincoln s absolute knowledge of, 
and truthful interpretation of, the Constitution, and 
all other public documents, was his fortress and 
strength. 

Then Douglas soon made a break with Buchanan, 
which brought Horace Greeley to his side, but lost 
him Southern patronage. This was brought about 
by Lincoln's prophetic astuteness in forcing leading 
questions upon him. 

Isaac N. Arnold, in his "Abraham Lincoln," says: 

"The discussions between Lincoln and Douglas in 
1858, were unquestionably the most Important in 
American history. There had been great debates in 
the old Continental Congress on the subject of Inde- 
pendence and other vital questions. 

"The discussion between Webster and Hayne and 
Webster and Calhoun on Nullification of the Con- 
stitution were memorable; but the debates in 1858 
between Lincoln and Douglas, in historic interest, 
surpassed them all and did more than any other 
agency to prepare the way for the overthrow of 
slavery. 

"The speeches of John Quincy Adams and Charles 
Sumner were more learned and scholarly; those of 
Lovejoy and Wendell Phillips more vehement and 
impassioned. 

40 



"But Lincoln's were more philosophical, while as 
earnest and able as any, and his manner had a sim- 
plicity and directness, a clearness of statement and 
felicity of illustration, and his language a plainness 
and Anglo-Saxon strength that reached the masses — 
the mass of voters." 

They were both thoroughly trained speakers, but 
entirely different in kind. 

Douglas said that in all his discussions at Wash- 
ington, he had never met an opponent who had given 
him so much trouble as Lincoln. 

Lincoln had several advantages over Douglas. He 
was always good humored. He had the better tem- 
per, and his wit and stories were an immense ad- 
vantage. 

Francis E. Browne, in his "Every Day Life of 
Lincoln," tells of a most laughable retort, on one 
occasion, which he made to Douglas. 

Douglas said in the course of his speech, "The 
Whigs are all dead." 

When Lincoln's turn came he said, as he con- 
tinued to arise from his chair, higher and higher : 

"Mr. Douglas has told you the Whigs are all 
dead, so you will now have the novelty of a speech 
from a dead man, and I suppose you might say, 
'Hark! from the tomb a doleful sound.' This set 
the audience wild with delight. 

Lincoln's speeches made people think. 

Once while Lincoln was speaking, Douglas be- 
came greatly excited, and he kept his watch before 
him while he paced back and forth. Suddenly he 
cried : 

"Sit down, Lincoln. Your time is up. Sit down." 

Turning slowly to Douglas, Lincoln said : 

"I will quit. I believe my time is up." 

"Yes," said a man on the platform, "Douglas has 

41 



had enough. It's time you let up on him." And 
this was the feeling of friend and foe alike. 



A FTER these debates Lincoln was invited to de- 
'^ liver a speech at Cooper Institute, New York 
City (February 27th, 1860). It was the speech of 
a scholar and a statesman, and as it embodies much 
that he said in the Douglas Debates, a part of it is 
here given: 

"Senator Douglas has said, 'Our fathers, when 
they framed the Government under which we live, 
understood this question just as well and even better 
than we do now/ I fully endorse this and adopt it 
as a text for this discourse. 

Who were our fathers, that 'framed the Consti- 



tution 



?' 



I suppose the thirty-nine who signed the original 
instrument may fairly be called 'Our Fathers.' 

What is the question, which, according to the text, 
those fathers understood 'just as well and even better 
than we do now ?' 

It is this: Does the proper division of local from 
federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, 
forbid our Federal Government to control as to 
slavery in our Federal Territories? 

Upon this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, 
and the Republicans the negative. 

This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this 
issue, this question is precisely what the text declares 
'our fathers understood better than we.' 

In 1787, Lincoln went on to show, "The ordi- 
nance prohibiting slavery in the territories became 
a law known as the Ordinance of '87. 

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the 
Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordi- 
nance of '87, including the prohibition of slavery 
in the Northwestern Territory, unanimously. 

42 



George Washington approved and signed the bill. 
In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the 
Louisiana Country. 

Our former territorial acquisitions came from our 
own states, but this Louisiana Country was acquired 
from a foreign nation. Slavery was intermingled 
with the people at the time the purchase was made. 

Congress did not here prohibit slavery, but they 
did interfere with it in a very marked way; thus 
showing Federal control. 

Now and here let me guard a little against being 
misunderstood. 

I do not mean to say that we are bound to follow 
implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so 
would be to discard all the lights of current ex- 
periences — to reject all progress, all improvement. 

What I do say is that if we would supplant the 
opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we 
should do so upon evidence so conclusive and argu- 
ment so clear, that even their great authority, fairly 
weighed and considered, cannot stand. And most 
assuredly not in a case whereof we ourselves declare, 
'They understood the question better than we/ 

And Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the 
thought of the mixing of blood by the white and 
black races. Agreed for once — a thousand times 
agreed ! 

And when he shall show that his policy is better 
adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours, we will 
drop ours and adopt his. 

Let us see: 

In 1850 there were in the United States 405,751 
mulattoes. Very few of these are the offspring of 
whites and free blacks ; nearly all have sprung from 
black slaves and white masters. 

In 1850 there were in the free states 56,649 mu- 
lattoes, but for the most part they were not born 

43 



there — they came from the slave states. In the same 
year the slave states had 348,874 mulattoes, all of 
home production. The proportion of mulattoes to 
blacks is much greater in the slave states than in 
the free states. It is worthy of note, too, that among 
the free states, those that make the colored man the 
nearest equal to the w^hite, have proportionately the 
fewest mulattoes. 

In New Hampshire, the state which goes farthest 
toward equality between the races, there are just 
184 mulattoes, while there are in Virginia — how 
many do you think? 79,775, being 23,126 more 
than in all the free states together. 

These statistics show that slavery is the greatest 
cause of amalgamation ; and yet Judge Douglas 
dreads the slightest restraint upon the spread of 
slavery, the slightest human recognition of the negro, 
as tending horribly toward amalgamation. 

I have said that the separation of the races is the 
only perfect preventive of amalgamation. Such 
separation, if effected at all, must be effected by 
colonization. The enterprise is a difficult one, but 
where there is a will there is a way. 

Will springs from the two elements of moral 
sense and self-interest. 

Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, 
and at the same time favorable to, or at least, not 
against, our self-interest to transfer the African to 
his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it. 

He ended by saying: 'Let us have faith that right 
makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, 
do our duty as we understand it.' " 



TN one speech (at Peoria) prior to this, he said: 
"Slave states are places for poor whites to re- 
move from, not to go to. 

44 



New free states are places for poor people to go 
to, and better their condition. For this use the 
nation needs the territories. 

Still further: There are constitutional relations 
between the slave and free states, which are degrad- 
ing to the latter. We are under legal obligations to 
catch and return their runaway slaves. A sort of 
dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, the slave 
owners will not perform for each other. 

In Government representation, five slaves nre con- 
sidered equal to three whites. Thus Maine has 
581,813 in population, and is so renresented, while 
South Carolina has 274.367. Maine has twice as 
many voters as South Carolina, and 52,679 over. 
But each white man in South Carolina is more than 
the double of any man in Maine. This is all be- 
cause South Carolina, besides her free people, has 
384,984 slaves. He is more than the double of any 
one in this crowd. Now all this is manifestlv unfair, 
but it is in the Constitution, and I stand to it, fairly, 
fullv, squarely. 

But when I am told that I must leave it alto- 
gether to other people to say whether new partners 
shall come into the firm, on the same degrading 
terms, I most respectfully demur. 

I insi^'t that whether I shall be a whole man. or 
only half of one in comparison with others, is a 
question in which I am somewhat concerned, and 
one v^hich no other man can have a sacred right of 
deciding for me. 

The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. 
For the sake of the Union it ought to be restored. 
If by any means we fail to do this, what follows? 
Slavery may, or may not, be established in Nebraska. 
But whether it be or not, we shall have repudiated, 
discarded, from the Councils of the Nation the 
Spirit of Compromise ; for who after this will ever 

45 



trust in a National Compromise! The Spirit of 
Mutual Concession ; that spirit which first gave us 
the Constitution, and which has thrice saved the 
Union, we shall have strangled and cast from us 
forever. 

At the framing and adoption of the Constitution, 
they forbore to so much as mention the word 'slave' 
or 'slavery' in the whole instrument. Thus the thing 
is hid away in the Constitution just as an afflicted 
man hides away a wen or cancer, which he dare not 
cut out lest he bleed to death. With the promise, 
nevertheless, that the cutting away may begin at a 
certain time." 

HTHE great National Republican Convention of 
1860 approached. An immense "wigwam" had 
been built in Chicago, and on May 16th of that 
year, the greatest convention ever assembled met 
there, in that building. 

Lincoln was the choice of Illinois, Seward of New 
York, for President. Then there were Salmon P. 
Chase of Ohio, Simeon Cameron of Pennsylvania 
and Edward Bates of Missouri. 

"Abraham Lincoln, the Rail Candidate," was the 
contribution from the Illinois members. 

Mr. Lincoln, though he said he had swung the axe 
and split rails from the time he was seven until he 
was tw^enty-one, never bragged about it. He knew 
too well that, because a man could split rails, he 
was not, therefore, necessarily fit to be President of 
the United States. On the contrary, he felt too 
painfully his early lack of education. 

When told that the people were talking of mak- 
ing him President, he said, "They ought to select 
someone who knows more than I do." 

However, this sobriquet had great power with 
the people, and "Honest Abe, the Rail Splitter," 

46 



whose text was the Declaration of Independence and 
whose chart was the Constitution of the United 
States, was unanimously nominated at this conven- 
tion, and elected the folloiving November. 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
OF AMERICA 

William Jennings Bryan has truly said, "Lincoln 
owed his greatness and his influence to his oratory." 
It was the debates with Douglas that brought him 
into national prominence. And now we find him at 
the Helm of the Ship of State, which he is to guide 
through the wildest storm the nation has ever known 
— through calumny and deceit of foes, and stubborn, 
unyielding prejudice of apparent friends, and the 
antagonism of the press. Yet he held the compass 
steady and guided the ship through its most tem- 
pestuous waters. 

He said once to his critics: 

"I am doing the best I can. If Blondin were 
crossing the Mississippi on a tight rope, with a load 
on his back, would you all call out to him, 'Blondin, 
stand up straighter ; Blondin, lean to the left ; Blon- 
din, go faster?' No, you would all hold your breath 
until he had reached the other side." 

Certain it is that Lincoln now began to exercise 
the rich resources of diplomacy, caution and far 
vision for which people little gave him credit, but 
they soon began to see and know that in his quiet, 
unpretentious way, he held the reins of government 
and not any other man. 

When Mrs. Lincoln said to him one day, "The 
people say Seward is running the government," he 
replied, "Well, I may not run it myself, but cer- 
tainly no other man will. My only master will be 
my Maker." 

His farewell address to his friends and neighbors 
as he left Springfield for his inaugural, showed his 

47 



reliance upon this spirit. The people at the time 
were disappointed that he did not commit himself 
to some National Policy, but time has revealed the 
wisdom of it, and has also placed this speech with 
the Gettysburg address, as one of the classics of the 
language. 

"Here," he said, "I have lived for a quarter of a 
century, and have passed from a young to an old 
man. Here my children have been born, and one 
of them lies buried. 

**I now leave, not knowing whether I shall ever 
retu'rn, with a task before me greater than that 
which rested upon Washington. 

"Without the assistance of that Divine Being, 
who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that 
assistance, I cannot fail. To His care commending 
you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend 
me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 



A T this time, seven of the slave holding states had 
left the Union, and he indeed had problems be- 
fore him. When he stepped forward to make his 
Inaugural Address, March 4th, 1861, people re- 
marked on his appearance. To please a little girl 
who asked him to let his whiskers grow and make 
himself ''better looking," the short, bristly, black hair 
was sprouting over chin and cheeks. He wore the 
proverbial black Prince Albert coat, and black silk 
high hat and carried a cane. 

Judge Taney, who had rendered the Dred Scott 
decision, conducted him into office. (He who soon 
would render that decision null and void.) 

As he stepped forward he seemed not to know 
what to do with his hat and cane. 

At this, Stephen A. Douglas, his old friend and 
enemy (or opponent), who was near, sprang for- 

48 



ward and took them, saying, "I can at least hold 
his hat," and he did so throughout the ceremonies. 

Lincoln said in part: 

"The power confided in me will be used to hold, 
occupy and possess the property and places belonging 
to the Government," and speaking to Southerners, 
he said: 

**My countrymen, think calmly and well upon 
this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by 
taking time. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- 
countrymen, and not in mine, are the momentous 
issues of civil war. The Government will not assail 
you unless you first assail it. 

"You have no oath registered in Heaven to de- 
stroy the Union, while I have the most solemn one 
to preserve, protect and defend it. I am loath to 
close. We are not enemies, but friends." 

P ORT SUMTER, at the entrance to Charles- 
ton Harbor, was at this time in command of 
General Anderson. On April 9th, Lincoln sent 
provisions there for the garrison ; notifying the 
Governor of South Carolina that he intended do- 
ing so. 

It was now plain that he meant what he said in 
his Inaugural: "The power confided in me will be 
used to hold, occupy and possess the property and 
places belonging to the Government." 

But South Carolina had determined that the gar- 
rison should not even be kept from starvation, and 
on April 12th the fort was bombarded until it fell. 

Three days later, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops. 
The North was aflame and the men came in so 
rapidly that soon the number swelled to 92,000 men. 

The railroads now began to be destroyed in Mary- 
land, and Washington was in a sad plight ; in danger 
both of invasion and of famine. 

49 



But slowly the troops came marching in. There 
were soldiers to defend the Capitol. 

The regular army was at this time only 16,000 
men. Lincoln ordered it increased by twenty-seven 
regiments. Soon there were 310,000 volunteers en- 
listed for three years. 

The next thing was to care for them properly. 
This was a problem. 

''Preparedness" seemed to be a word not yet born 
into the vocabulary of American political economy. 

All through January, February and March, the 
Confederates had been laying up ammunition right 
under the noses of the Union officers. 

Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkan- 
sas were slave-holding states, but had not seceded. 
When they were called upon to furnish their quota 
of men, however, they joined the others, making 
eleven seceding states. 

The states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky 
and Missouri were all slave-holding states, but they 
did not secede. They were called the border states. 
The western part of Virginia was mountainous and 
not adapted to slave labor, and so West Virginia 
was now formed into a state and joined the Union. 

In the mountainous regions further south, many 
people were loyal, and about 100.000 of them fought 
for the Union, showing that the principle of seces- 
sion lay pretty close to the purse-strings. 

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, 
was a man of imperious temper. He had, in line 
with his ambition, long been strengthening the 
prejudice and the power of the Southern States, pre- 
paratory to a separation. It can be truly said that 
he inaugurated the war. 

(Not to do Jefferson Davis an injustice I will 
say that there are people who disagree with this, and 

50 



think that he was urged into the war by Yancey, 
Rhett, Toombs and others. 

The Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander 
H. Stephens, was of very different character, moral- 
ly, intellectually and patriotically. He said in a 
speech in Georgia, "What right has the North as- 
sailed? What interest of the South has been in- 
vaded ? What justice has been denied ? When we 
of the South demanded the slave trade, or the im- 
portation of Africans for the cultivation of our 
lands, did they not yield the right for twenty years? 

**When we asked a three-fifths representation in 
Congress for our slaves, was it not granted ? When 
we asked the return of fugitive slaves, was it not 
given by the 'Fugitive Slave Law'?" 



Ah, yes! How well Lincoln, too, knew that the 

North was as much to blame as the South for 

slavery! And now were the dogs of war let loose! 

And the "sins of the fathers" were about to be 

"visited upon the children." 

We cannot take up in this flashlight of Lincoln 
the details of this awful familv strife, Jefferson 
Davis declared "Cotton is King" and fully expected 
the sympathy of England, because her manufactur- 
ing interests depended upon receiving the raw cotton 
from the South to make into cloth. 

The North knew their policy was to close the 
Southern ports to foreign trade, and gain control of 
the Mississippi River. 

At first the victories were altogether with the 
South, and the Man at the Helm found difficulty 
in securing the right generals. 

He had appointed in his cabinet men, regardless 
of party, whom he thought he needed. Four of 
them, Seward, Chase, Cameron and Bates, had been 

51 



his rivals for the Presidency. When his friends 
remonstrated, he said, "These gentlemen have the 
confidence of their several states, and I need them," 
and he said to them, "Let us forget ourselves and 
join hands like brothers to save the Republic. If we 
succeed there will be glory enough for all." 

Yet Lincoln at first had little sympathy and co- 
operation from his cabinet. They all thought they 
knew more than he and they placed little trust in 
him. 

But they did not know this "Master of Men." 
Those far-seeing eyes read right straight through 
them into the Beyond. His kindness they mistook 
for incompetency, his calmness for indifference. 
Besides this, Lincoln found that Western Europe, 
if not openly hostile, was indifferently cool. But 
the great heart of the people had been aroused, and 
he felt its beat in the song, 

"We are coming. Father Abraham, 
Six hundred thousand strong." 
and to the people his great heart responded. 

ISAAC N. ARNOLD says: "At the moment of 
extremest peril, when the son of the western pio- 
neer, whom the people had chosen for their Chief 
Magistrate, was confronted by the dangers which 
gathered around his country ; when his great, honest 
soul bowed itself to God, and, simple as a child, in 
deepest supplication, asked His guidance and bless- 
ing; at this hour, from no crowned head, from no 
aristocratic ruler abroad, came any word of sympa- 
thy; but those proud rulers could coarsely jest at his 
uncouth figure, his uncourtly bearing. 

" 'The great Republic is no more ! Democracy 
is a rope of sand,' they said. 

"But the Almighty answered that prayer. He 
joined the hearts and linked the hands of the Amer- 

52 



ican people and their President together, and from 
that hour the needle does not more quickly point to 
the polar influence than did Lincoln to the highest 
and God-inspired impulses of a great people." 

Nearly two hundred graduates from West Point 
deserted and went over to the South ; and yet among 
officers born in the seceding states, many of the best 
were loyal, Scott and Thomas, Meade and Farragut, 
among many others. 

In May, 1861, three negroes came into General 
Butler's camp, saying they had escaped from work- 
ing on the enemy's fortifications. General Butler 
held them as he would any horse, cow or dog be- 
longing to the enemy, as contraband of war, and set 
them to work on his ow^n fortifications. This posi- 
tion was worth as much as a battle won. 

While McClellan said to them (the South), "Not 
only will we abstain from all interference with your 
slaves, but we will with an iron hand crush any 
attempt at insurrection on their part." 



T^HE Great Man in the White House had not 
only to guide these generals of his, with all their 
diametrically opposite methods, but Congress, his 
Cabinet, and his diplomatic relations with other 
countries, and, above all, he had to consider the 
people of the Border States, who, though owning 
slaves, still remained with the Union. 

These people he wished to conciliate and hold. 
He knew that any overt acts on the part of his 
generals toward slavery would antagonize these 
Border States, and that their fifty thousand bayo- 
nets, now in the Union cause, would be turned 
against the Union. 

53 



When General Fremont in Missouri freed all 
the slaves in his military district, Lincoln called him 
to account and promptly stated that it was only by 
Act of Congress that slaves could be freed, and that 
the war was not against slavery, but against secession. 
That the war was being waged to maintain and up- 
hold the Constitution and the Government. He had 
to take the same course with General Hunter, Com- 
mander of the Department of the South, who had 
issued an order freeing all the slaves in his depart- 
ment. 

It was a difficult matter for the Chief Executive 
to steer an even course between the demands of the 
Abolitionists on one hand and the criticism of the 
pro-slavery sympathizers on the other. 

He was so overwhelmed with office seekers from 
the moment of and before his Inauguration, that one 
day when he was particularly beset, the White House 
physician being present, he said, ''Doctor, I have a 
breaking out all over me. What do you suppose 
it is?" 

The doctor replied, '*I think it must be vario- 
loid." 

"Oh, well," he responded, "tell all the office seek- 
ers to come and see me now, for I have something 
I can give them." 

Once a delegation of prohibitionists came and said 
that the reason the North did not win was because 
the soldiers drank v/hisky, and so brought the curse 
of the Lord upon them. 

With a twinkle in his eye, Lincoln said he "con- 
sidered that very unfair of the Lord, for the South- 
erners drank much worse whisky and a great deal 
more of it." 

The first year of the war was a series of victories 
for the South. 

54 



T INCOLN called the Representatives of the Bor- 
der States together and urged and fairly begged 
them to allow the Government to purchase their 
slaves. 

He said that the cost of the war for one-half a 
day would buy all the slaves in Delaware at $400 
apiece. 

He argued that if the Border States would do 
this, it would settle the question with the seceding 
states. That they would not only give up all hope 
of the Border States joining the Confederacy, but 
the example set would undoubtedly be followed by 
one and then another as they saw the wisdom of it, 
until the Confederacy would vanish away. 

Congress finally passed a law to this effect, that is, 
that the Government would pay for all the slaves, 
bvt the Border States would not hear to it. Their 
contention was that the war was against disunion, 
and not against slavery. 

This, too, was Lincoln's position, though no man 
hated slavery worse than he. But it was the en- 
forcement of the Constitution that gave him the 
legal ground upon which to stand in the prosecution 
of the war. 

At the same time, he sent a special message to 
Congress, saying: 

"That the United States ought to co-operate with 
any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of 
slavery, giving to such states pecuniary aid, to be 
used by such state, in its discretion, to compensate 
for the inconvenience, public and private, by such 
change of system." 

He then sent word to the South, saying: 

"This resolution was adopted by large rnajorities 
in both Houses of Congress, and stands as an authen- 
tic, definite and solemn proposal of the Nation. 
This proposal makes common cause for a common 

55 



object, casting no reproach upon any. Will you not 
embrace itf 

"May the vast future not have to lament that 
you have neglected it!" 

Thus did the great Chief Executive plead with 
the South, as a father pleads with disobedient chil- 
dren. 

At this time all the slaves in the District of Co- 
lumbia were purchased by the Government for 
$1,000,000 and other considerations; and Mr. Lin- 
coln saw the resolutions he had laid before Congress 
twenty-odd years before, put into operation. 



r'^N July 4th, 1861, Lincoln sent this message to 
Congress, called in special session: 

"Much is said about the sovereignty of states; 
but the word even is not in the National Constitu- 
tion, nor, as is believed, in any of the State Consti- 
tutions. 

"What is sovereignty, in the political use of the 
term? 

"Would it be wrong to define it as 'a political 
community without a political superior'? Tested 
by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was 
a sovereignty, and even Texas gave up the character 
in coming into the Union ; by which act she acknowl- 
edged the Constitution of the United States, and the 
laws and treaties of the United States, made in pur- 
suance of the Constitution, to be for her the supreme 
law of the land. 

"The States have their status in the Union, and 
they have no other legal status. If they break from 
this, they can only do so against law and by revolu- 
tion. 

"The Union, and not themselves separately, pro- 
cured their independence and their liberty. 

56 



'*By conquest or purchase, the Union gave each 
of them whatever of independence or liberty it has. 

"The Union is older than any of the States, and, 
in fact, it created them as States. 

"Originally, some dependent colonies made the 
Union, and in return the Union threw off their old 
dependence for them, and made them States. 

"Not one of them ever had a State Constitution, 
independent of the Union. 

"Of course, it is not forgotten that all the new 
States framed their Constitutions before they entered 
the Union, nevertheless, dependent upon and pre- 
paratory to coming into the Union. 

"What is now combatted is the position that seces- 
sion is consistent with the Constitution — is lawful 
and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any 
express law for it, and nothing should ever be im- 
plied as law which leads to unjust or absurd conse- 
quences. The nation purchased with money the 
countries out of which several of these States were 
formed. Is it just that they should go off without 
leave or refunding? The Nation paid very large 
sums, in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred 
million, to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. 

"Is it just that she shall now be off without con- 
sent, or without making any return? A part of the 
present national debt was contracted to pay the old 
debts of Texas. Is it just that she should leave 
and pay no part of this herself? 

"If one State may secede, so may another, and 
when all have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. 

"Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify 
them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed 
their money? 

"The principle itself is one of distintegration, and 
upon which no Government can possibly endure. 

57 



"Our popular government has often been called 
an experiment. Two points in it our people have 
already settled — the successful establishing and the 
successful administering of it. 

"One still remains — its successful maintenance 
against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow 
it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world 
that those who can fairly carry an election, can also 
suppress a rebellion ; that ballots are the rightful 
and peaceful successors of bullets ; and that when bal- 
lots have fairly and peacefully decided, there can be 
no successful appeal back to bullets. 

"Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching 
men that what they cannot take by an election, 
neither can they take by war." 

Lincoln always tried to make everything he said 
and wrote plain, simple and clear, so that all the 
people would understand it. Once when one of his 
Cabinet spoke of changing his wording, he said, 
"Well, I guess the people will understand it." 



\ ND now he, above all others, knew only too 
well what was coming. 
The stubbornness of the conflict — the impetuous 
determination of the Abolitionists of the North — 
the proud spirit of superiority in the South, and its 
relentless determination to break the Union, were 
pushing him forward toward a step that he dreaded 
above all to take. 

Horace Greeley, the brilliant editor of the New 
York Tribune, was particularly bitter because he 
was taking time to weigh the matter. To all the 
attacks made upon him this man said never a word. 
When remonstrated with for his silence, he replied, 
"What good will it do? If I succeed, my course 
will be vindicated ; if I do not succeed, ten thousand 

5S 



angels could not convince them that I had done 
right." 

But to one public letter from Horace Greeley, he 
replied : 

"August 22nd, 1862. 
Hon. Horace Greeley. 
Dear Sir: 

I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed 
to myself through the New York Tribune. 

If there be in it any statements, or assump- 
tions of fact which I know to be erroneous, I do 
not here and now controvert them. 

If there be in it any inferences which I may 
believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and 
here argue against them. 

If there be perceptible in it an impatient and 
dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old 
friend, whose heart I have always supposed to 
be right. 

As to the policy 'I seem to be pursuing,' as 
you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in 
doubt. 

/ 'would save the Union 

I would save it in the shortest way under the 
Constitution. 

The sooner the national authority can be re- 
stored, the nearer the Union will be the Union 
as it ivas. 

If there be those who would not save the 
Union, unless they could at the same time save 
slavery, I do not agree with them. 

If there be those who would not save the 
Union, unless at the same time they would de- 
stroy slavery, I do not agree with them. 

My paramount object in this struggle is to 
save the Union, and is not to save or destroy 
slavery. 

If I could save the Union without freeing a 
slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by 
freeing all slaves, I would do it; and if I could 
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, 
I would also do that. 

What I do about slavery and the colored race, 
I do because I believe it helps to save this Union, 
and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not 
believe it would help to save the Union. 

59 



I shall do less whenever I believe that what I 
am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more 
whenever I shall believe doing more will help 
the cause. 

/ shall try to correct errors ivhen shoijun to be 
errors, and I shall adopt neiu <vie'ws so fast as 
they shall appear to be true 'vieius. 

I have here stated my purpose according to 
my view of official duty, and I intend no modifi- 
cation of my oft-expressed personal wish, that 
all men everywhere could be free. 
Yours, 

"A. Lincoln." 

While Abraham Lincoln was writing this letter to 
Horace Greeley, he had the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion carefully penned and laid away. But the time 
had not yet come. 

Just about this time, a delegation of clergymen 
called upon him, urging him to take this step. After 
listening to their arguments, he said : 

"I do not want to issue a document that the whole 
world will see must be inoperative, like the 'Pope's 
Bull against the Comet.' I have not decided against 
a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the 
matter under advisement. Whatever shall appear 
to be God's will, I will do." 

And so this quiet, positive, undemonstrative man, 
who carefully weighed every act of his executive 
office, was resting his case, the act which he knew 
would wreck the Southern States, upon the Spirit 
of Truth, which always guided him. 



And now what was being done in the army! 

Disaster after disaster seemed to follow the Fed- 
eral troops. The South was in command of able 
men. Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, "Stone- 
wall" Jackson, and many other brave and able men 
were on the Confederate side. Both Lee and John- 

60 



ston disapproved at first of the war, but went with 
their states when they seceded. 

They seemed invincible foes. In the midst of 
these depressing events, the South sent a couple of 
Commissioners (Mason and Slidell) to England 
and France for the purpose of securing aid. They 
escaped the blockade at Charleston and took passage 
on the British mail steamer, Trent, from Havana. 
Captain Wilkes, of the United States war vessel, 
San Jacinto, stopped the Trent, took off Mason and 
Slidell and confined them in Fort Warren in Boston 
Harbor. 

The North rang with plaudits for Captain 
Wilkes. But there was a man in the White House 
who not only wanted to keep peace with threaten- 
ing England, but w^ho remembered that we had de- 
clared war upon England in 1812 for the very thing 
that we ourselves had now done. So in spite of pro- 
tests, in spite of anathemas that were heaped upon 
him, this anxious, iron-willed man, who always 
stood for the right, apologized and delivered up the 
men to the British. Even this victory therefor 
seemed a defeat, but it was not. It was a victory 
for right, and saved war with England. 



A BOUT this time the iron-clad Merrimac was 
"^ set afloat to break the blockade. 

On March 8th, 1862, this iron-clad steamed into 
Hampton Roads. The American vessels poured 
broadside after broadside upon her, but the balls all 
rebounded from her slanting inpenetrable sides. She 
rammed her iron beak into the Cumberland and 
sank her, then turned to the Congress and set her 
afire and forced her to surrender. 

The blockade at Norfolk was broken! 

The Merrimac expected to complete her work 
the following day. 

61 



The North was in consternation! But, behold, 
with tomorrow came a surprise. A queer looking 
craft came into those waters. She had a revolving 
turret, carrying two powerful guns, and an iron 
plated deck almost level with the water. It was 
Ericsson's "Monitor," and the launching of the 
Monitor was due to Abraham Lincoln, who was the 
first and only man who encouraged Ericsson, and 
urged that money be supplied to construct it. It 
had been built with desperate energy, hoping to be 
ready as soon as the Merrimac. 

The next morning the Merrimac steered boldly 
out to finish her work, but the Monitor steered 
boldly tovv'ard the Merrimac. A duel of more than 
three hours ensued. The Merrimac had met her 
match, and withdrew, badly damaged. The little 
Monitor had saved the Union ! 



T^HE generals on land offered all sorts of ex- 
cuses for defeat. 

"Oh, I see!" remarked the astute President. "We 
whipped the enemy and then ran away from him." 

Explanations did not satisfy. What the Com- 
mander-in-Chief wanted was to repair the disasters. 

Someone asked him how many men he thought 
were in a certain division of the Confederacy. 

"1,200,000," he replied. 

"That can hardly be possible," was the rejoinder. 

"Oh, yes, our Generals all say the enemy out- 
numbered them in each battle, three to one, and 
we have four hundred thousand men." This sense 
of humor was, as Mr. Lincoln said, the only thing 
which kept him from breaking. 

During the four long hazardous years, when he 
was tried almost beyond endurance, by disaffection 
among members of his Cabinet, censure, criticism, 

62 



ridicule that was barbaric in its rudeness and ignor- 
ance, this Master of Men held his peace and kept 
his heart in the right place and his faith firm as the 
Rock of Gibralter, not only by his trust in the 
Guidance of the Spirit, but by reading everything 
humorous that he could find. He kept the writings 
of Petroleum V. Nasby always near him and some- 
times read them to his Cabinet. 

McClellan was supposed to take Richmond, but 
he didn't. He just hung around and wouldn't move. 

Lincoln remonstrated and urged him to go for- 
ward — then McClellan was . discourteous. The 
country noticed this. But Lincoln, ever forgetful 
of self, said, "I will hold McClellan's horse for 
him, if he will only bring us victory." 

Once he said, "If McClellan doesn't want to use 
the army for a few days, I'd like to borrow it, and 
see if it cannot be made to do something." 

Mr. Lincoln studied the strategy of war, with the 
thoroughness with which he had always mastered 
any difficult task, and he laid before Congress a 
plan of campaign which would have shortened the 
war very materially. But Congress would not 
adopt it. 

Finally, McClellan defeated Lee at Antietum, 
September 17th, 1862. 

Lincoln now called his Cabinet together and said : 

"I had determined that as soon as the Rebel 
forces were driven out of Maryland, I would issue 
the "Proclamation of Emancipation." This act was 
to take place January 1st, 1863. There was no ex- 
ultation in his heart. He said, "I can only trust in 
God that I have done right." 

He spent the time between September 18th and 
January 1st, urging the Border States, urging Con- 
gress, urging everybody, to accept a measure which 



he had carefully worked out to emancipate by pur- 
chasing the slaves. 

He said: Substantially to the Border States: 

''Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, 
of this Congress and this administration, will be re- 
membered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial 
through which we pass will light us down in honor 
or dishonor to the latest generation. 

We say we are for the Union. The world will 
not forget that we say this. We know how to save 
the Union. The world knows that we do know 
how to save it. 

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the 
responsibility. 

In giving freedom to the slaves, we assure free- 
dom to the free ; honorable alike in what we give 
and what we preserve. 

We shall honorably save, or meanly lose, the 
last, best hope of earth. 

Other means may succeed. This could not fail. 
The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just. A way, 
which if followed, the world will ever applaud, 
and God must forever bless." 

But the Border States would not heed, and the 
measure to purchase their slaves was defeated by 
their own votes. 



A LL this time the country was clamoring for 
McClellan to be removed. He neither followed 
up his victory at Antietam, nor would he make a 
move against Richmond, which was the most im- 
portant step now. McClellan was a wonderful 
organizer and immensely popular with his men. The 
President, with his inexhaustible patience, wanted 
to give him every chance. Not only this, but he 
knew only too well, that the moment he removed 

64 



him, his friends, those who were now opposing the 
Emancipation Proclamation, would spring up 
around him like Ezekiel's army, in the "Valley of 
dry bones." 

The President, with his prophetic vision, read the 
future correctly, as was seen in the next presidential 
campaign, when McCIellan was nominated for 
President and one of the planks in the platform of 
his party was, "The war is a failure." McCIellan 
seemed to be doing nothing now to prevent that 
failure. 

At last, Mr. Lincoln relieved him from com- 
mand. But who should take his place? He took 
General Hooker, but still there was defeat. Then 
Meade was put at the head, and on July 3rd, de- 
feated Lee at Gettysburg. But Meade, in turn let 
Lee escape across the Potomac, after his victory. 

It seemed impossible to induce any General to 
follow up a victory. Why ? Was it not largely be- 
cause of untrained service, inadequate care for the 
wounded, and the consequent horribleness in the 
reaction after every great battle? 

Both North and South took their raw, unhard- 
ened boys and men, and hurled them at each other. 
The suffering on both sides was awful and unfor- 
givable. If nations are going to fight, let them train 
fighters, and not take boys from the counting-house 
and peaceful farm lands, from their studies and 
from every other employment. Let them train 
brutes as they train prize-fighters, and set them at 
it! It is brutal, savage, demoralizing business, and 
no wonder the men deserted! 

How well he, who was the Commander-in-Chief 
of the army and navy knew this, and how his heart 
bled for these poor boys! 

The army never forgot his hearty handshake, and 
his fervent "God bless you." 

66 



His acts of mercy and sympathy were so many, 
that the Generals complained that he ruined their 
discipline. But the poor boy under twenty, some 
only seventeen, never failed of his leniency, could 
he be reached. 

They called him ''Father Abraham." And on 
one poor boy that was shot to death was found the 
words, "God bless Abraham Lincoln/' 

This boy, William Scott, by name, had been par- 
doned. He had agreed to do double picket duty 
to help a friend. It was too much. He was found 
asleep at his post, and ordered shot, but his mother 
appealed to Lincoln — he wrote : ''Let this woman 
have her son.'' The son was saved only to die like 
a true soldier, later. 

To the sick and the wounded both Mr. and Mrs. 
Lincoln were especially kind. Mrs. Lincoln sent 
barrels and barrels of delicacies from the White 
House larder, and many kind messages. The 
wounded Confederate soldiers shared in these acts 
of kindness, and they looked upon Lincoln as "a 
true gentleman." 

He abhorred the death penalty for desertion, but 
trickery, deceit, frauds, any absolute wickedness, he 
had little mercy for. 



TT HE Emancipation Proclamation caused severe 
criticism from Southern sympathizers in the 
North, who thought Lincoln had no right to issue 
it. These people urged many a man to desert. 

"Must I shoot a simple-minded boy for deserting, 
while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator 
who induces him to desert?" Lincoln asked. 

Then there was the mortal homesickness. 

"If the man has no friends, I'll be his friend," 
was the motto of the Commander-in-Chief. 

66 



And yet the war had to proceed. During this 
time there was a little man in the Western Division, 
who said little, but did much. Lincoln watched 
him. He captured Forts Donelson and Henry near 
the mouth of the Tennessee River. 

His method was, "No terms except unconditional 
surrender can be accepted. I propose to move im- 
mediately upon your works." While other officers 
complained, this man said nothing. There were 
complaints against him. 

*'I can't spare this man," said Lincoln. "He 
fights/' 

"He drinks," they said. 

"Tell me the brand of liquor," said the harassed 
but ever ready-witted President," and I'll send a 
barrel to some of my other generals." 

Finally, in July, 1862, when Halleck was called 
to Washington, as Commander-in-Chief, this man 
Grant was put at the head of the Western Division. 
The opening of the Mississippi was now the im- 
portant thing m the West, the capture of Richmond 
in the East. 

Then the President sent Charles A. Dana, the 
brilliant young newspaper man to see what Grant 
was doing. He wrote back, "Grant is a General 
whom nothing can turn from a purpose." 

Then Vicksburg was taken on the same day with 
Gettysburg. 

Grant was too busy to write about it, and asked 
Dana to do it for him. Soon after, he saved East 
Tennessee, by driving the enemy from the moun- 
tains. Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge 
(battles of Chattanooga and Chickamauga). With 
him were the gallant Rosecrans, Thomas, and Gar- 
field. 

67 



Grant was summoned to Washington. "What 
was wanted?" 

"Take Richmond," the President replied. 

nn HEN the President called for more troops. 

Chicago sent a delegation to protest against 

sending more men. Lincoln showed this delegation 

that he could be bitter on occasion, as well as firm. 

"After Boston," he said to them, "Chicago has 
been the chief instrument in bringing about this 
war on the country. It is you who are largely 
responsible for making blood flow as it has. You 
called for war until we had it. You called for 
emancipation, and I have given it to you. What- 
ever you asked for, you have had, and now you come 
here, begging to be let off from furnishing the quota 
of men necessary to prosecute the war which you 
yourselves have brought about. 

"And you, Medill," turning to the editor, "you 
and your Chicago Tribune have had more influence 
than any paper in the North in making this war. 

"You can influence great masses, and yet you 
cry to be spared when your cause is suffering. Go 
home and send us those men." And thev did. 



npHE battle of Gettysburg was a hard fought 
battle and many brave men fell upon that field. 
A part of this field was afterward set apart as a 
National Cemetery, dedicated to these heroes. 

The nineteenth of November following the battle, 
at the dedication of this cemetery, the President 
spoke the following words, which have been fittingly 
called, 



"A PERFECT TRIBUTE." 

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this Continent 
A New Nation 
Conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the propo- 
sition that 

All men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation; or any Nation so conceived 
and so dedicated. 

Can long endure. 
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final 
resting place of those who here 

Gave their lives 
that 
That nation might live. 
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
do this. 

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we 
cannot consecrate — we cannot 

Hallow this ground. 
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled 
here have consecrated it far 

beyond our Power to add, or detract. 
The world will little note, nor long remember, 
what we say here, but it can 

Never forget what they did here. 
It is for us, the living rather, to be dedicated here 
to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly 
carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us. 

That from these honored dead, we take increased 
devotion to that cause for which they here gave the 
last full measure of devotion. 
That we here highly resolve that these dead 
Shall not have died in vain: 



That this Nation, shall under God, have a 
New birth of Freedom; 
and that 

Government of the people^ by the people and for 
the people, shall not perish from the Earth/' 

nn HE door-keepers of the White House, had 
orders that no matter how great the throng, 
Lincoln would always see anyone who had a petition 
for saving life. 

One day, the Hon. Thaddeus Stephens called with 
a lady whose son had been ordered shot. 

After listening patiently to the story, Lincoln 
wrote a pardon. Her gratitude was so great that 
she could not speak. 

Going down the steps, she stopped and exclaimed, 
"I knew it was a Copperhead lie!" 

"What do you mean, Madame?" said Mr. 
Stephens. 

**Why, they told me he was an ugly looking man. 
I think he is the handsomest man I ever saw in my 
life." 

Mr. D. R. Locke (Petroleum V. Nesby) of 
whose writings Lincoln was so fond, said: 

"Those who accused Lincoln of frivolity, never 
knew him. I never saw a more thoughtful face. I 
never saw a more dignified face. I never saw so 
sad a face. 

He had humor, of which he was entirely uncon- 
scious, but it was not frivolity. He said wonder- 
fully witty things, but not from any desire to be 
witty. 

He never cared how he made a point, so long 
as he made it, and he never told a story for the 
mere purpose of telling it. 

It was always to illustrate or drive home some 
truth. He was a master of satire, but it was always 

70 



kindly, except when aimed at some horrible injus- 
tice. Then it was terrible. Intentional wickedness 
he never spared." 

Lincoln said, "Perhaps I have too little resent- 
ment, but I never thought it paid. A man has no 
time to spend half his life in quarrels'' 

"1 ^H[EN he appointed Stanton Secretary of War, 

'^ it was not because he wanted him, but be- 
cause the country needed him. 

Stanton had been fairly brutal in his speech and 
conduct toward Mr. Lincoln. And it was Stanton 
who so ignored him that hot summer day in Cin- 
cinnati, as was noticed at first in this flashlight: 

*'We may have to treat him," said the President, 
"as they sometimes are obliged to treat a Methodist 
minister I know of out West. He gets wrought 
up to such a pitch. of excitement in his prayers, that 
they are obliged to put bricks in his pockets to keep 
him down. We may have to serve Stanton that way, 
but I guess we'll let him jump a while first." 

Absolutely unperturbed, the President was sure 
of managing, or at least of not being managed by 
Stanton. 

"I have faith in such men," said Mr. Lincoln. 
"They stand between the nation and perdition." 

He seemed to have made some arrangement with 
Stanton, whereby he would not as a rule over-ride 
his decisions. 

Judge Baldwin, of California, wanted a pass 
through the lines to see his brother in Virginia. 
There seemed no good reason not to grant it, as he 
was a good Union man. 

"Have you applied to General Halleck," asked 
the President. 

"Yes," answered the Judge, "and met with a 
flat refusal." 

71 



"Then you must see Stanton." 

"I have, with the same result." 

"Well, then, I can do nothing," said the Presi- 
dent, with a smile, "for you must know I have 
very little influence in this administration." 

The President's patience was illustrated when 
Congressman Lovejoy called with some others to 
arrange a mingling of Eastern and Western troops 
for the purpose of promoting a feeling of national 
unity. 

Mr. Lincoln approved of the plan and wrote a 
note to his Secretary of War. 

Mr. Stanton refused to carry it out. 

"But we have the President's order, sir," said 
Mr. Lovejoy. 

"Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?" 
asked the Secretary. 

"He did, sir." 

"Then he's a damned fool." 

"Do you mean to say the President is a damned 
fool?" asked the Congressman, in amazement. 

"Yes, sir, if he gave you an order like that." 

Mr. Lovejoy reported this to the President. 

"Did Stanton say I was a damned fool?" 

"He did, sir, and repeated it." 

"If Stanton said I was a damned fool," concluded 
Mr. Lincoln, "then I must be one, for he is nearly 
always right and generally says what he means. 
I will step over and see him." 

The President did this, and the matter was 
quickly adjusted. 

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lincoln, on one occasion, 
"it is my duty to submit. I cannot add to Mr. 
Stanton's troubles. His position is one of the most 
difficult in the world. 

72 



"Thousands in the army blame him because they 
arc not promoted, and other thousands out of the 
army blame him because they are not appointed. 

"The pressure upon him is immeasurable and un- 
ending. 

"He is the rock on the beach of our national 
ocean, against which the breakers dash and roar 
without ceasing. 

"He fights back the angry waters and prevents 
them from undermining and overwhelming the land. 

"Gentlemen, I do not see how he survives. Why 
he is not crushed and torn to pieces. 

"Without him I should be destroyed. He per- 
forms his task superhumanly. 

"Now do not mind this matter, for Mr. Stanton 
is right, and I cannot wrongly interfere with him." 

Thus did Abraham Lincoln generously laud the 
man who heretofore had never ceased to bitterly 
criticise him, tho he had generously appointed Stan- 
ton to the (at that time) most important position 
in his Cabinet. Self did not enter into Lincoln's 
calculations. 

Edwin M. Stanton was as true as a die, but he 
had a high temper, strong personal likes and dis- 
likes, and no sense of humor. 

Lincoln could not look upon the Confederate 
soldiers with the bitter feeling exhibited by Stanton. 

Many of these wished to be discharged from 
prison upon taking the oath of allegiance to the 
Union ; and it was only by the most tactful methods 
that Mr. Lincoln could induce Mr. Stanton to sign 
an order for their discharge, but by such means the 
Secretary would respond: 
"Mr. President: 

Your order for the discharge of any prisoners of 
war, will be cheerfully and promptly obeyed." 

73 



And so the "Master of Men" handled this most 
difficult man, and gained whatever it was his pur- 
pose to gain. 



T 



HERE is but one contingency that can cause 
your defeat for a second term," one of Lin- 
coln's friends said to him about this time (1863), 
"and that is Grant's capture of Richmond and his 
nomination for the Presidency." 

"Well," replied Mr. Lincoln, shrewdly, "I feel 
about that very much as the man felt who said he 
didn't want to die particularly, but if he had to 
die, that was precisely the disease he would like to 
die of." 



TN an address at the Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, 
^ April 18, 1864, Lincoln said: 

"The world has never had a good definition of 
the word 'Liberty,' and the American people are, 
just now, in much need of one. 

"We all declare for 'Liberty/ but in using the 
same word, we do not mean the same thing. 

"With some the word 'Liberty' may mean for 
each man to do as he pleases with himself and the 
products of his labor; while with others, the same 
word may mean for some men to do as they please 
with other men, and the products of other men's 
labor. 

"Here are two, not only different, but incompat- 
ible things, called by the same name 'Liberty.' 

"And it follows that each of these things is, by 
respective parties, called by two different and in- 
compatible names — Liberty and Tyranny. 

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's 
throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd, as 
his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the 

74 



same act, as the destroyer of liberty. (Especially as 
the sheep was a black one.) 

"Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed 
upon the word 'Liberty.' " 



AS in Lincoln's day, so today, it is the question — 
Liberty — that confronts us. 

The things that come out into the open can be 
met and fought, but the things that are hidden away 
in dark places are a harder matter to fight. 

In the late world war, it seemed as though the 
flood gates of Hell had been opened, and they are 
not yet entirely closed. There are hellish plots now 
slinking into dark corners, because they can not 
stand the light. They are grinning with wicked 
leers, waiting the opportune moment to strangle our 
fair Goddess "Liberty." 

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." 

It was this "Eternal Vigilance," of which people 
never dreamed, which aged the care-worn, uncom- 
municative Commander-in-Chief of the Army and 
Navy — the man in the White House who was try- 
ing to keep the Ship of State from going on the 
rocks. 

While the press was cartooning the President, 
and bringing its every line to bear upon a "Change 
of Administration," while he was being lampooned 
for not bringing to justice the perpetrators of the 
New York Draft Riots, what was happening? 



nPHIS sketch would not be complete unless the 
light flashed into these hidden, iniquitous by- 
paths, filled with terror unsuspected. 

The reason that Mr. Lincoln kept quiet about 
the New York Riots was because at that time 

75 



throughout the North (as early as the summer of 
1863) there were treasonable organizations being 
formed, under the names of "The Sons of Liberty," 
Knights of the "Golden Circle," and others, the 
object of which was the disruption of the North. 

They had their agents in Canada. Lincoln knew 
of this and was quietly investigating. 

He did not want to stir up this hornet's nest, and 
have two rebellions on his hands. 

General Rosecrans made a full discovery of this 
conspiracy in February, 1864, soon after he was 
placed in command of the Department of Missouri. 

His spies joined the order, were admitted to its 
secret conclaves, and they ascertained that it was a 
gigantic organization, spreading over the Western 
states. 

The Commanders were C. L. Vallandingham, of 
Ohio, and General Sterling Price, of Missouri. It 
was a military organization, and claimed a member- 
ship of 500,000, pledged to "take up arms against 
any Government found waging war against a people 
endeavoring to establish a government of their own 
choice." 

They were in co-operation with Confederate 
troops, which were to come from Canada as well as 
from the South. 

There was a concerted plan to liberate all Con- 
federate prisoners at Camp Douglas, Camp Mor- 
ton, Johnson's Island, etc., supplying arms which 
were secretly brought in. There was a vast plot 
to burn Chicago, wrap the West in flames, separate 
the East from the West and win for the South. 

The story of how this diabolical plan involving 
universal death and distress was prevented is most 
thrilling. 

Colonel Maurice Langhorn's statement regarding 
the part he played in "scotching the snake and kill- 

76 



ing it," as Lincoln called it, is in Johns Hopkins 
University. There is not room to say more here, 
but in Mr. James R. Gilmore's Recollections of 
Mr. Lincoln, there is a very full and thrilling ac- 
count of it. 

Reference has already been made to the secret 
mission of Colonel J. F. Jacquess, to the Confed- 
erate leaders. He went as a messenger of the Al- 
mighty, and it was Lincoln's mystical reliance and 
hold upon the Unseen, which gave him faith in this 
mission of Jacquess'. 

By almost a miracle, he reached the Confederate 
leaders and gained much valuable information, 
though he did not attain his object. 

He wanted to go again, and this time Lincoln 
persuaded Mr. James R. Gilmore to accompany 
him, and take proposals to Jefferson Davis to end 
the war. 

These proposals were private and confidential, 
and Mr. Gilmore made them as coming from Mr. 
Lincoln, but not authoritatively. They were, in 
part, these: 

"4th. All acts of secession to be regarded as 
nullities ; and the late rebellious states to be treated 
as though they had never attempted to secede from 
the Union. 

"5th. The sum of $5,000,000 in United States 
stock to be issued, and divided between the late 
slave states, emancipated by my proclamation. This 
sum to be divided among the late slave owners, 
equally and equitably, at the rate of one-half the 
value of their slaves in the year 1860, and if any 
surplus should remain, it to be returned to the 
United States Treasury." 

Had these terms to Mr. Davis been accepted, the 
South would have come out of the war in much 
better shape than the North, and the long and ter- 

77 



rible years of reconstruction would have been 
avoided. 

But Jefferson Davis would have none of it. It 
was Independence, or fight it out. 

This was the last offer made by Mr. Lincoln, and 
showed the unresentful generosity of his heart. 

When Mr. Gilmore returned after the hazardous 
trip, he spread the views of Mr. Davis out fully in 
the Press. The news went like wildfire through the 
North; and from the people — the Great People — de- 
spite the ambitious leaders of factions, a cry went up 
for the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, as Presi- 
dent of the United States. 



TTPON being congratulated upon his renomina- 
tion, Lincoln said : 

"I do not allow myself to suppose that either the 
Convention or the League has concluded that I am 
either the greatest or the best man in America, but 
rather they have concluded 'not to swap horses 
while crossing the river.' " 

This maxim of Lincoln's has become a part of 
every-day speech. 

With the support of Meade and Hancock, Grant 
was now so firmly entrenched about Richmond that 
it was impossible for the forces of the South to dis- 
lodge him — and the war was nearly over and my 
brief story is nearly told. 

What has been written is for those who think, 
but have not time to peruse long volumes. 

If history is what Voltaire calls it, "A lie which 
men agree to call the truth," then, indeed, is the 
life of any Great Man, in the light of example, 
most futile. 

I have gleaned from innumerable books on Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the facts which, to me, stand out as 

78 



flashlights upon his character, his influence, his force 
in welding this nation into 

ONE POWERFUL UNION. 

Many incidents are necessarilj^ omitted, but what 
is herein stated are facts, not fiction. 

I have had three dominant ideas in mind while 
writing, and if they have been made clear, you 
must have observed that they were — partly: Lincoln s 
absolute knowledge of, and thorough acquaintance 
with, all public documents. 

It was this thoroughness which made him always 
from young boyhood the Master. 

He was very, very shy when a child. He seemed 
to feel his awkwardness and his poor attire, for of 
all the boys, he was clothed the worst. He did not 
at one time during that short school period of less 
than a year, join in the sports with others, but 
stood bashfully apart. 

One day, however, the bully of the crowd grabbed 
him and engaged him in a fight. The boy "Abe," 
then as always, downed his antagonist, and there- 
after was looked upon as a "good fellow," for his 
physical as well as his mental strength. 

The same thing happened after he went to New 
Salem at twenty-one, when he treated John Arm- 
strong, another bully, like a "will o' the wisp," and 
afterward was a devoted friend of the family, sav- 
ing a brother from the gallows, when he practiced 
law. 

He was a true American because he knew what 
it meant to be a true American. 

He was thoroughly imbued with the heroic spirit 
of those who made the nation. He saw things from 
their outlook, to which was added the experience 
of after events of which he had a perfect knowl- 
edge. To this knowledge he added the mastery of 
character. 

79 



He said in an address in Springfield, as far back 
as 1837, just after he had been admitted to the bar: 

'^Let every man remember that to violate the law 
is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear 
the character of his own and his children's liberty. 

'*het reverence for the laws be breathed by every 
American mother to the lisping babe who prattles on 
her lap. 

*'L,et it be taught in the schools, in seminaries and 
colleges. 

''Let it be written in primers, spelling books and 
almanacs. 

"Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed 
in legislative halls, and enforced in the Courts of 
justice. 

"In short, let it become the political religion of 
the nation, and let the old and the young, the rich 
and the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and 
tongues and colors and conditions sacrifice unceas- 
ingly upon its altars." 

"l\^HO shall say that Abraham Lincoln did not 
live up to this standard which, at the age of 
twenty-six, he set before his fellow citizens? 

And although Abraham Lincoln said these words 
over eighty years ago, they hold just as true today. 
Circumstances may change, new difficulties may 
arise, enemies may be strange and diflFerent, but 
principles remain ever the same; and there never 
was a day in the varied trials of our Beloved Coun- 
try when the sterling truths of Abraham Lincoln 
needed to be more carefully taught and rigidly en- 
forced than today. 

/I MAXIM of this Master of Men was, "Truth 
is your truest friend, no matter what the cir- 
cumstances are." 



And once when he was asked by a politician to 
sign a questionable bill that a certain good object 
might result, he replied: 

"You may torture my soul, you may hum my 
body, and scatter the ashes to the winds of Heaven, 
but you will never get me to subscribe to a measure 
which I know to be wrong, even if by doing so good 
may result/* 

This was Abraham Lincoln's character. It was 
high, clean and true. This is why people trusted 
him. 

This is why his name will always stand out as 
Great — like that of Washington — before the nation. 

HE WAS ABSOLUTELY TRUE. 

Then there was that inner consciousness called 
Conscience. This is what made him true. His con- 
science was king, but more than this. 

There was an indefinable something about it 
which no man can measure. A sensitiveness of soul, 
which made him keenly alive to vibrations, if I 
might use the term, from the Unseen World. 

The sad death of his boy, Willie, in 1862, brought 
him in closer touch with this influence. 

Walt Whitman said: 

"The foundations of his character, more than any 
man's in history, were mystic and spiritual. 

His manner was so simple that it would invite 
familiarity, yet something indefinable kept people at 
a distance, as in the presence of a Master. 



L-IE was," says the Spectator, "above all things a 
gentleman. This he showed in the kindness 
exhibited toward his generals, when he either praised 
them or had some cause to blame them." 

He never doubted himself or his mission. His 
serenity showed this, 

.81 



No man can be serene who doubts himself. He 
had pride ; pride for the whole nation, but no vanity. 

It was Napoleon's vanity that was his undoing. 
Lincoln, like Washington, was entirely devoid of 
this vanity. 

During the whole period that Chase was Secre- 
tayr of the Treasury, he was conspiring for the 
Presidency. Lincoln knew this, but he was unper- 
turbed by it. 

"I am entirely indifferent to his success or failure 
in these schemes," he said, "so long as he does his 
duty at the head of the Treasury Department." 

In connection with this, he related one of his 
"home-spun" stories to Henry J. Raymond, the edi- 
tor. 

"Raymond," he said, "you were brought up on a 
farm, and you know what a 'chin-fly' is. My brother 
and I were once plowing corn on a Kentucky farm, 
I driving the horse and he holding the plow. The 
horse was lazy, but upon one occasion rushed across 
the field so that I, with my long legs, could scarcely 
keep pace with him. On reaching the end of the 
furrow, I found an enormous chin-fly fastened upon 
him, and I knocked it off. My brother asked me 
what I did that for. I told him I didn't want the 
old horse bitten that way. 'Why,' said my brother, 
'that was the only thing that made him go.' 

"Now if Mr. Chase has a presidential 'chin-fly' 
biting him, I'm not going to knock it off, if it will 
only make his department go." 

Only a true Master of Men and Master of Self 
and only one who looked upon the Drama of Life, 
realizing that he was to play that part in the Drama, 
which had already been assigned to him by its Au- 
thor, could be so calmly indifferent to the influences 
that were working to undermine his authority. 



In his magnanimity, he afterward appointed 
Chase Chief Justice of the United States Supreme 
Court. 

All these qualities which came to him through 
the Unseen Power which ever guided and upheld 
him, were depicted upon that sad countenance. He 
had a most irresistible smile, and his voice, though 
trained away from a natural melodiousness by out- 
of-door speaking, was, nevertheless, full of feeling. 

A S time passed, Lincoln became convinced that 
it was the purpose of the Almighty to cause 
the North and the South to suffer alike for slavery. 
This was evinced in that second Inaugural Address, 
wherein he shows the MAJESTY OF HIS 
TRUST IN A JUST GOD. 

J-fE said: '"Both (North and South) read the 
same Bible and pray to the same God, and 
each invokes his aid against the other. 

"It may seem strange that any men should dare 
to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their 
bread from the sweat of other mens faces, but let 
us 'judge not, that we be not judged.' 

''The prayers of both could not be answered; 
that of neither has been answered fully. 

"The Almighty has his own plans and purposes. 

"Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it 
must needs be that offenses come. But woe unto 
that man by whom the offense cometh. 

"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
of those offenses, which in the Providence of God 
must needs come, but which having continued 
through His appointed time. He now wills to re- 
move, and that He gives to both North and South 
this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom 



the offense came, shall we discover therein any de- 
parture from those Divine attributes, which the be- 
lievers in a living God always ascribe to him? 

''Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 

''Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the 
wealth piled by the bondsman s two hundred and 
fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 
'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether/ 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see 
the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are 
in — to bind up the Nations' wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow and his orphan. 

"To do all which may achieve a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and all nations" 

Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist who painted 
Lincoln and his Cabinet about to sign the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, says: 

"A few days before the re-inauguration of Mr. 
Lincoln in 1865, this picture was temporarily placed 
in the rotunda of the Capitol. 

"As the painting reached its position, a wander- 
ing sunbeam crept in from the top of the Great 
Dome, and settled full upon the head of Mr. Lin- 
coln, leaving all the rest of the picture in the 
shadow. 

"The eflFect was singular and wonderful. 'Look!' 

exclaimed R , a policeman of the Capitol Squad, 

'that is as it should be. God bless him! May the 
sun shine upon his head forever!' " 

84 



CHORTLY after this, the President decided to 
^ take a holiday, and took steamer for Grant's 
headquarters, at City Point, at the junction of the 
James and Appomatox Rivers. 

Here Sherman came from Goldsboro, North 
Carolina, which place he had reached in his March 
to the Sea, from Atlanta, Georgia, to consult with 
the President and General Grant. 

Both Generals thought the war about over, but 
agreed that there must be one more big battle. This 
Lincoln implored them to avoid, if possible. "No 
more bloodshed," he begged. 

Richmond was now abandoned, and he went to 
view the remains. He started alone and unpro- 
tected, except for one or two friends, but Admiral 
Porter was in the Bay, and hearing of it, sent a 
body-guard to escort him. 

He stepped into the house that had been Jeffer- 
son Davis' headquarters. 

One day, going to Libby Prison, someone said, 
"Jefferson Davis ought to be shot." 

"Judge not, that ye be not judged," Charles Sum- 
ner heard him say. 

On April ninth, Lee surrendered to Grant at 
Appomatox, and the war was practically over. 

The problem of reconstruction was now before 
the President. This was the object of his anxious 
solicitude. He offered pardon to all who would 
come back into the Government. 

This was resented by the Legislature. They said 
he had not consulted them — that Rebels should be 
punished, not pardoned. 

But Lincoln considered this "bad as the basis of 
controversy. Good for nothing at all. Merely a 
pernicious abstraction." "Finding themselves safely 
at home," he said, "it would be utterly immaterial 
whether they had ever been abroad or not." He 

85 



plainly told his Cabinet that he would never be a 
party to any act of resentment. There had been 
enough bloodshed. 



/^OOD Friday morning come. It was on April 
fourteenth. 

An order was sent out to stop the purchase of 
military supplies and to suspend the draft. 

Early that morning, Ward Lamon, the United 
States Marshal of the District of Columbia, might 
be seen wending his way to the White House. 

He had in his hand a request for the pardon of 
an old soldier who had been convicted of breaking 
an army regulation. 

Upon gaining audience ^Yith the President, Mr. 
Lincoln turned to him and said, "Lamon, do you 
know how the Patagonians eat oysters?" 

"No, I do not, Mr. Lincoln." 

"Well, it is their habit to open them as fast as 
they can and throw the shells out of the window. 
When the pile of shells grows higher than the house, 
they pick up stakes and move on. Now, Lamon, I 
feel like beginning a new pile of pardons, and I 
guess this is a good one to begin on." This is the 
last of Mr. Lincoln's anecdotes that has been re- 
corded. 

Secretary Stanton said he had never seen Mr. 
Lincoln so happy and cheerful as on this day, and 
that he showed in a marked degree his humanity 
and tender, forgiving disposition. The indescribable 
sadness which was habitual, now gave way to a 
serenity that was very marked. 

His form straightened and his eye grew bright. 
His Life Purpose was accomplished. The Stars and 
Stripes which just four years before had been torn 
from Fort Sumter, were today floating again in the 



breeze. How thankful we are that the Man at the 
Helm lived to see that day! 



TT was a Millennium Day. 

The cry of the mourners was turning to gladness, 
for their dead had helped to save the Union. 

The family at the White House was happy. Cap- 
tain Robert Lincoln, then an aide on Grant's staff, 
was at home for the day. At the breakfast table, 
the President had Robert E. Lee's picture before 
him, and he said to his son: ''It is a good face. It 
is the face of a noble , brave man. The war is now 
closed, and we will soon live in peace with the brave 
men who have been fighting against us." 

It was a beautiful day in Washington. The dog- 
wood was in blossom and the willows were turning 
green. 

In the afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln went for 
a drive. 

"Mary," he said, "we have had a hard time since 
we came to Washington, but the war is over, and 
with God's blessing, we may hope for four years of 
peace and happiness, and then we will go back to 
Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We 
have saved up some money and during the next four 
years we will try and save a little more, and when 
we go back I'll open an office in Chicago or Spring- 
field, and at least do enough to give us a livelihood." 
A true Nature's Gentleman! 



A FEW nights before this Easter Day, the 
'^ President dreamed that he was awakened by 
people weeping all around him; and he arose and 
passed into another room, where he saw on a cata- 
falque a casket draped in mourning. They told him 

87 



the President had been assassinated, and was lying 
there. 

And, alas! this dream came true. 

The morning after this ''Easter Day" the sun 
rose upon a mourning nation. This Nature's Gen- 
tleman, this "Shepherd of the People," had passed 
out, and "he was not, for God took him." 

Stanton said, as, with streaming eyes, he closed 
the eyelids of his Chief: 

"Now he belongs to the ages." 

And "Tad," the young lad who loved his father 
so dearly, said, between his sobs, "Do you think my 
father is happy?" 

"Yes, very happy," was the reply. 

"Then I am glad my father has gone to Heaven, 
for he never was happy in this house. This was not 
a good place for him." 

The cry of Walt Whitman, 

"Oh, Captain! My Captain! 

Our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every rack. 

The prize we sought is won. 
The port is near, the bells I hear, 

The people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel. 

The vessel grim and daring. 

But Oh, heart, heart, heart! 

Oh, the bleeding drops of red 
Where on the deck my Captain lies 

Fallen cold and dead. 

Oh, Captain! My Captain! 

Rise up and hear the bells ; 
Rise up ! For you the flag is flung 

For you the bugle trills. 



For you, bouquets and ribboned wreaths 

For you, the shores a-crowding 
For you, they call, the swaying mass 

Their eager faces turning. 

Here Captain ! Dear father — 

This arm beneath your head. 
It is some dream that on the deck 

You've fallen — cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, 

His lips are pale and still. 
My father does not feel my arm. 

He has no pulse nor will. 

The Ship is anchored safe and sound 

The voyage closed and done 
From fearful trip, the Victor Ship 

Comes in with object won. 

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! 

But I with mournful tread 
Walk the deck my Captain lies 

Fallen cold and dead. 

This was the cry of a grateful, but sad and mourn- 
ful nation. 



^ 



tt 



Edward Eggleston relates how Mr. Lincoln 
when he went to New York in 1860, and made his 
celebrated Cooper Union Address, remained over 
Sunday and visited the Five Points Sunday School. 
He was urged to speak to the children, and finally 
did so. 

In telling this to a friend upon his return home, 
he said: **I tell you, Jim, I didn't know what to 
say, but I had heard they were homeless and friend- 
less and I thought of the time when I had been 
pinched by terrible poverty. 

And so I told them that I had been poor; that I 
remembered when my toes stuck out through my 
broken shoes in winter. When my arms were out 
at the elbows; when I shivered with the cold. 

And I told them there was only one rule: that 
was, always to do the very best you can. I told 
them that I had always tried to do the very best 
I could, and that if they would follow that rule, 
they would get along somehow. 

That was about all I said. And when I got 
through, Mr. Pease, the superintendent, said it was 
just what they needed, and all the teachers came 
and shook hands with me and thanked me." 

Here Mr. Lincoln put his hand in his pocket, 
and drew forth a little book, saying, that he never 
heard anything that touched him as the songs those 
children sang. 

Then he began reading one of them with all the 
earnestness of his great earnest soul. Jim soon felt 
his throat harden and the great tears began falling 
fast. 

Turning to Mr. Lincoln he saw that his eyes 
were so bedimmed that he could not see the page, 
and was repeating the song from memory. 

«1 



npHUS did the man who was about to step Into 
the highest place in the nation meet on their 
own ground, in the simplicity of his manliness, those 
who were now situated as he once had been — for he 
knew that the Lord was the Maker of them all — 
and that there was no pride among souls — for "souls 
are all made of the same stuff." 



/^ AN I add one word that would impress more 
deeply the wonderful lessons, lessons in hon- 
esty, in kindness, in simplicity, in true nobility, and 
in patriotism — that patriotism that wins for country 
and the glory of God — can I add one word to these 
lessons gleaned from the life of Abraham Lincoln, 
the 

SAVIOUR OF HIS COUNTRY? 

I cannot. ^ <" ) 



92 



II 



